Baskerville Island
by Servant of Fire
Summary: AU. Part of the "Major" series, but can be read alone. John gets a suspicious call from his sister, Harry, and Sherlock discovers that she has programmed a GPS locator to John's phone. That same week, Mycroft asks Sherlock to take a case in the Caribbean, one with modern day rum smugglers. When Sherlock and John are kidnapped, Major and Molly must save them from Baskerville Island.
1. Chapter 1 The City of Brotherly Love

** Baskerville Island~**

** For the One Who's love transcends Family and the Ocean~**

** Chapter One: The City of Brotherly Love~**

The morning sun peered through the windows of Baker Street. It was in the middle of spring, and the windows were open ,and a warm ,clean wind blew through the flat, and ruffled John Watson's hair as he stepped out of the bathroom, dressed only in a pair of shorts, and his shower robe. Humming contentedly, feeling very well rested for once, he milled about the house,buzzing like a humming-bird in search of flowers, or more like a locust in search of things to devour, so hungry he was for the breakfast Mrs. Hudson was downstairs making.

He laughed as he heard the shower turn on, and Major Sholto, (who had moved into 221 C after Sherlock solved the case that proved he was not to blame for the deaths of the new recruits he lead into a fire-fight) clambered into the shower belting out "Eleanor Rigby" at the top of his lungs. John stopped walking when he heard a quiet agitated grunt coming from Sherlock's room. Curiously,he pushed the door open.

John smiled broadly, just to be able to lay eyes on him. Stood there remembering how he had actually met Sherlock during his study in a military academy, a couple of years before Afghanistan even. Remembering how he had lost all memory of Sherlock, who was then working for the Secret Intelligence Services as their "detective consulting", after he had supposedly been killed by Moriarty and the same Afghani drug lords, called the "Viper's Nest" that had also forcibly addicted him to a mix of different drugs. Remembering how he had lived with Sherlock for years here on Baker Street, up until the day that he actually did leap to his death from St. Bart's rooftop, and came back from clinical death 34 hours later, in one of the most bazaar cases of Lazarus Syndrome medically documented. Remembered how he had been reunited with him during the case that not only cleared Major Sholto's name, but also stopped the nefarious Sebastian Moran.

He lay in the present moment on top of his sheets, sleeping lightly, on the verge of waking, raven hair tousled by the morning wind breathing through his window, dressed in a white t-shirt ,that's thin fabric was sheer enough to see the highlight of the scars he had received when being tormented for John's safety, and a pair of black lounge pants, that had pushed up to his knees, revealing scars on his heels and lower legs as well.

Had grunted like that, and had twisted his brows together, being drawn ever so slightly up from his slumber by the drawling tones of Eleanor Rigby resonating off the shower, and the flat, and Baker Street below them.

John stared at him, jaw gone slack, amazed by how many things they had survived,and overcome by the reality of how much he loved this man. He was more family than his parents and sister. Closer than a brother, even.

He leaned against the door frame, with a gentle smile on his kind features ,watching "little brother" sleep, when his phone rang.

Speaking of sister...

"Hello, John."

"Harry? I've never known you to call before lunch?"

"Oh, I'm sober today. Actually going through painful detox...Don't get excited; it's not permanent."

John pinched the bridge of his nose. Even his patience had limits ,and his sister provoked the temper he was known for spiking ,like a fever, on some occasions.

"What do you want?" he asked, annoyed.

"Oh, nothing important! Just wanted to know if you still had the old phone Clara gave me before she became such a witch-and bloody well divorced me!"

John's head swam, unable to remember if Clara had divorced Harry, or if Harry had divorced Clara, not really caring to keep up with his sister's romantic life.

"Uh, yeah, I'm talking to you on it?"

"Great, John! That's just great. Ok, that's all I wanted to know...Cheers!"

She hung up in his head.

"That was...suspicious..." a baritone voice rattled from across the room.

John looked up to see Sherlock still lying as he had been, but now with one silver-green eye groggily peaking open.

John smiled at him again, "Good morning..." he said, voice low...and came and stood beside his bed.

Sherlock's eyes fluttered, trying to wake himself up, and then he stretched and yawned, his mouth opening three times its normal size, almost cat like the way he stretched out and then recoiled his long thin body,and twitched his nose. John chuckled at him, and he sat up, slapping his lips together, and shaking his head, wild raven curls springing back into storm-cloud like place. As if resuming some business he had paused for brief respite, he blinked, and with a curt nod he said:

"Most suspicious. She never calls you; you always call her. She called around 8:30, and if she ever did call, even for what she considered an "emergency " such as "Clara wants to get back together" or" I've run out of rum" sort of "emergency", she would never call before noon. The call was uncommonly brief; she usually rants to you for hours,which is why you never phone her. She asked about your phone, which you would have long ago wiped of any information she may have left on it. Conclusion, she has programmed something on it, that she meant for you, and not for a new owner, and she hoped that it hadn't been rubbished. A virus? Pictures to offend you? No, she hasn't had any reason to be that offended with you recently...But...a GPS locator..."

Sherlock reached and gently plucked the mobile phone from John's hands, pressing a few buttons on it. Sure enough, a GPS locator program lit up the screen.

"Oh my God, why would she program GPS to MY phone?" John growled, fists clenching.

Sherlock's face took on a dark look, the kind of dark look that John dreaded very much seeing on his face.

"You...think...it's...more than a prank ,don't you? You think she's gotten in deep with somebody this time, and is going to sell us out to them?"

Sherlock swallowed..."Would you put it past her?"

As much as John loved his sister, he didn't trust her. John trusted Sherlock almost as much as he loved him, which was saying very great deal. If he was suspicious, then there was probably a good reason for it.

"No...actually, no, she's done things like that before to me... blaming me for stuff, and Dad would take it all out on me, and Mum would really put me down, when Harry was the one that had "soiled their reputation"..."

Sherlock nodded, thoughtfully.

"What...do we do about it,...if she has?"

Sherlock sighed. Possible domestic betrayal was badgering for his attention, and he had only just woken up from the first time that he actually did sleep in days.

"Probably should be on the alert, inform the Major, and either find a way to wipe that program off your phone, or discard it and furnish you with a new one."

John smiled at him, and he met his gaze. If just for a moment, it didn't matter. Never mind his devious sister, always plotting a way to make him look bad. Never mind his abusive drunk parents who had enabled his sister's abusive, immoral, and sometimes criminal life-style.

The morning sun was shining down on him, and he could walk with head held high, proud to say that he lived in his" City of Brotherly Love" now, and was part of the Clan Baker Street.

He could hear the matron of their make-shift family calling to them from downstairs,

"Hey, wheehoo, Oi, BOYS! Breakfast and tea! Come fetch a plate!"

Sherlock and John laughed as they heard Major take a running leap off the edge of the settee, heading for the stairs.

Today John was loved, and that is all that mattered to him now. Whatever little puzzle his sister had cooked up for them, could wait until after burned crumpets, and Earl Grey boiling over.

Sherlock was up, slipping his blue dressing gown over slim shoulders, and disappeared down the stairs, in a flicker of blue fabric.

John bounded after him hoping the others would save him at least a PIECE of a crumpet!


	2. Chapter 2 The Home of Your Heart

**Chapter 2: The Home of Your Heart~**

Baker Street was alive and breathing, as much a character in our story as any of its residents, and perhaps our silent narrator. John was silent throughout breakfast, floating through thin air in his own Thought, barely hearing Mrs. Hudson's birdlike chatter with the Major, or the rustle of newspaper as Sherlock flipped through it grumbling "Boring, Boring, EXTREMELY Boring..." at the turn of every page, and then, slapped it down, and started flipping through his fancy blackberry, looking for some sign of Work coming his way...something to wrap his vast intellect around.

But Baker Street had John's full attention now, and he was listening to her every word. The sound of the tea kettle, of Earl Grey shrieking protests as Mrs. Hudson left him on the stove, to blow his top again for a SECOND round of cups. Heard dishes clatter in the sink, and soap suds swished everywhere, one of them gracefully lightning in the center of Sherlock's curls, like a swan to her dark nest on the water, as Mrs. Hudson dropped the plates back into the soapy solution, to appease the Earl's provoked wrath. Heard the alarm on the stove beeping, to remind ever-absent minded Mrs. Hudson, "Oi, hello? Yes ,dear, the cherry pie you put in is baked enough! Twice ,actually." Hears Mrs. Hudson gasp, and scold Sherlock as she opens the refrigerator, only to find a bag of human eyeballs, to which Sherlock just shrugs and says, "Molly and I are studying the signs of botched cataracts surgery...and more creative forms of murder..." Hears the Major curse under his breath, when he can't figure out the top on a can of spray-on whipped cream, and then Sherlock's annoyed spluttering as the can back fires all over him...

Sounds of a day in the life of Doctor John Watson... A wonderful life, Baker Street reminded him. Whispered softly to him ,to take heart, to be at peace, that it was all fine. He was home now, despite all the Wars and Terror he had lived through. He was Home. This was his home. This was his family. He would never be alone...

Not like before. He closes his eyes, as the swing of his father's belt whizzes through the air, in his memory. Till he was too old for overly frequent whipping to actually persuade him to behave(well more along the lines of what his overly zealous hypocrite father wanted, and less along the lines of what a compassionate parent would require) . Till he was 15, and was angry and didn't really give two thoughts about his own safety ,or care if he lived or died, and was out taking dares from older boys, like trying to hot-wire cars, and boats, and once even a train that he only drove a mile from where it belonged before he figured he'd get in more trouble than he could get out of. Till it came to the point where his Dad told him it was either he enlist in the Army, or he was out on the street, because ,by God, he wouldn't be helping him get an education!

That's when he had decided, "By God, John Watson will be a man that even his bloody father would be proud of! A really good man!"

And then ,totally out of left field, Sherlock Holmes, the boy-genius( who in military academy doubled as a chemistry teacher whilst practicing for his career as the World's Only Consulting Detective), had walked into his life, and had completely derailed it.

And John stopped trying to be the best man ,other than Christ Himself, who ever lived. Because he knew he never would be; he had already found the Best Man. His name was Sherlock, and he absolutely loved him, despite his eccentric ways.

Quite by accident, John fell head over heels, in a platonic sort of love, that had earned his father's ever increasing disapproval. Threats had come. If John didn't stop "hanging around this troublesome creature" then Colonel Watson was going to stop paying his tuition. Mycroft saw what sort of influence John was having on his indeed troubled baby brother, and decided to use his own increasing wealth to pay John's tuition off, and that solved the problem of money. But as for the Colonel, this only turned his disapproval to rage. Greater threats kept coming, and John stopped checking the mail. So a call came one night, that totally altered the future of the young doctor.

_"Hello, this is Private Watson's personal contact number?" answered the young medic-to-be._

_Only to hear the Colonel on the other end of the line, in a drunken rage._

_"JOHN! By God, boy, I swear, but I'll teach you to not answer my messages..."_

_"Dad..." John had answered nervously._

_"If I can't control you it makes me look weak. To my peers, that makes me look weak; a son I can't control?! Well, GOD BLESS IT, I AM NOT WEAK! I WILL CONTROL YOU, IF IT KILLS YOU..."_

_"It just might..."John muttered._

_"Talking back to me?"_

_"Can...can we not do this, please? I'm trying to eat my dinner; they only give us a few minutes..."_

_"Are you with that ...echh...what's the Jew's name eh?-that Freak that...what did you call him...his mother...was that Jewish mathematician..."_

_"HIS NAME IS SHERLOCK, DAD! SHERLOCK HOLMES! FOR GOD'S SAKES, WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH ME HAVING A FRIEND?!"_

_"BECAUSE HE IS A FRIEND THAT YOU CHOSE, AND YOUR CHOICES ARE WRONG! YOU-STUPID KID-DON'T YOU KNOW?! IF I CAN'T CONTROL WHAT YOU DO, THEN I'M WEAK TO MY PEERS, AND IT GIVES US ALL A BAD NAME! AND I BLOODY WELL WILL NOT ALLOW SOME BLOODY LITTLE FREAK TO INFLUENCE YOU AWAY FROM YOUR HERITAGE!"_

_"For God's sakes, Dad! He's my friend..He's like my brother..and I love him. Why do you have a problem with me making a friend? If I can't make friends, then what about a girlfriend, huh? How do you expect to have grandchildren if I'm never allowed to fall in love and get married?"_

_By now the other boys in the dinner lounge were giving John very strange, and sympathetic looks. Mike Stamford had gone white, and was clutching his fork angrily, knowing all about John's hypocritical father. Sherlock wasn't here because he was in the lab, getting the things ready for tomorrow's lesson. John secretly wished that Sherlock was here, because he'd probably snatch the phone away, and give the old jerk an ear full._

_Colonel Watson's voice grew cold._

_"You ...you, really, John? You actually think that I will ALLOW you to... fall in love?...Oh that's...really precious! REALLY?! You are a son of a soldier, born for War, not some fairytale rubbish like LOVE. You will marry the woman your mother and I pick out for you! You will set your sites for that girl, you will persuade her, bribe her, stalk her, even BULLY her if need be!, till she marries you, and then you will carry on your military heritage with as much dignity and pride as I have..."_

_"No..."John whispered._

_"What?!"_

_"I said no, ok?! Sorry, but no. Sherlock is my friend, and I love him. So there. If you don't like it, that's too bad.I'm a grown man now, so you can't scare me with threats anymore."_

_The other line went deadly quiet, and the other boys felt their stomachs roll with sickness at whatever happened next. It didn't help that John's phone was on speaker..._

_"Then...I have to disown you."_

_"Sorry?"_

_"I'm sorry too, John. You left me no choice... I can't keep a son I can't control. I didn't want you anyway; you were an unplanned pregnancy ,FYI. If you come back to my house, I will shoot you in your heart."_

_"I could just kill myself ; save you the trouble!" John wailed, desperate to get his attention, for the last time._

_"I don't care if you do."_

_And with that the Colonel hung up._

_John gaped at his classmates, who were staring at him, some of them in angry tears._

_"Sorry...He's...mentally-...I'm...sorry..." John gasped._

_And quietly fled the room._

_A little while later Sherlock came into the lounge searching for salt, planning on making a natrium chloride solution with it. When the other boys flocked around him, with the terrible news._

_Sherlock spent the next 6 hours scoping the campus looking for the boy._

John was in tears now, trying to hide behind his folded hands, remembering that night, and how Sherlock had found him , curled up under the walk bridge by the teacher's swan-pond, totally wasted off a bottle of rum he had stolen from one of the teacher's "medicine cabinets".

_"Not a word about the liquor to the other teachers!" Sherlock commanded his students._

_The other boys made an oath, swearing with a lot of colorful words, and a lot of different descriptions of what they'd like to do to Colonel Watson._

_Then Sherlock got down on his hands and knees under the bridge, and lifted the bottle up , shaking John, and when at last he woke him up he said:_

_"Where'd you get this?"_

_"Mahoney's cabinets..."John slurred._

_Sherlock swallowed, "Do you have more?"_

_John pulled two out of his coat...and a bottle of pills. The other boys gasped. The combination would have definitely killed him, and maybe that's what he had intended for..._

_"Is this all of it?"Sherlock asked, patiently._

_John nodded, as if unsure._

_"Alright...have you hurt yourself?"_

_John looked down at where he'd speared a piece of wood into his leg, accidentally, having tumbled under this bridge._

_Sherlock called for a first aid kit, and the other boys got him one. John was so drunk he barely even felt it when Sherlock pulled the massive splinter out, and stitched him up._

_Then with all of his strength, not asking for help from the obviously stronger,older boys, Sherlock hauled John up, and let him lean heavily across his shoulders..._

_"Let's get you home."_

_"No...If I go home, he'll kill me...I can't go home..."John murmured._

_Lee West cursed and it took 6 other boys grappling with him to keep him from tearing the head from one of the garden statues._

_"IT JUST AINT RIGHT!" West screamed._

_"No...Your home is with me now...understand? ...You're part of my family now, and I would never let that happen to you, do you hear me? I will never let you take the Fall for anything...not even if it kills me. "_

He had kept his promise, and it HAD killed him. John cried, remembering the day that Sherlock had taken the Fall for him. Remembering burning the nasty note Harry had sent ,about what Dad had to say when he'd heard Sherlock was dead...

John laughed through his silent tears, so softly none of the others noticed. Love had saved his life over and over and over. And home was where his heart was. He didn't need to worry himself with whatever tormenting thing Harry had come up with now...she couldn't drag him back into those days of his dark past, no matter what she did. He looked over at Sherlock, and realized that if not on Baker Street, then anywhere else, he was home, so long as he was with him.

Sherlock looked up for just a minute drawn out of his own thoughts by John's gaze,and smiled back, as if to say a belated "Good morning."

And it was ,indeed.

Just then Mycroft threw open the door, stepping in with a flourish, Molly Hooper and Greg Lestrade at his heels.


	3. Chapter 3 Guarded By Phantoms

**Chapter 3: Guarded By Phantoms~**

"Oh, hello, Mycroft, and to what criminal mind do I owe the pleasure?" said Sherlock looking up from his phone, and his untouched breakfast. The Major looked up from a crumpet he had smothered in whipped cream, wearing a mustache of the stuff, and very somberly dabbed it off, assuming a soldier's attentive listening stance. John blinked back the mist of tears, propelled back into the present, by Mycroft's sudden presence and by the grim look on Lestrade's face, and by the worried look on Molly's, as she chewed her lip.

"A situation that very adversely effects the international interests of the United Kingdom..." Mycroft began..."Particulary the City of London."

"Oh, so the usual,then? Well, have a seat, Mrs. Hudson was just cutting the pie she made to go with these crumpets."

Mrs. Hudson looked up with a toothy smile, a huge mallet like knife in her hands, blade awash in the blood of cherries.

"It must be a rather engaging puzzle, to have involved no doubt the SIS, as well as myself, the doctor, the Major, the landlady, the pathologist ,and the policeman..." Sherlock grinned, folding his hands, as if in prayer,

"You'd think you were calling a meeting with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen!"

Mycroft smiled, "Well,actually, Sherlock, that is precisely what I am doing. I haven't informed the Services, I have come to you. Which I only do on a very pressing matter, as you are the only one of my agents that I trust my life with..."

"God help you!" Greg muttered, and Sherlock curled a brow, but didn't overly explore what that was supposed to mean.

Molly took a seat, and smiled, "It's just like when we were kids, Sherlock!" (for Sherlock and Molly had actually met long before the days when he was a consulting detective, and she was his consulting pathologist. They met as children, and had been the very best of friends in their younger years..and when they had developed careers ,Molly had volunteered to be Sherlock's personal assistant)

"Pirates!" she whispered, curling her nose, a glitter of mischief in her eyes. "Oh, sorry, was I not supposed to tell him?,..." she corrected , looking sidelong at Mycroft.

"Pirates?What pirates?" Sherlock asked, suddenly very engaged, face a serious mask, but eyes dancing like birthday candles. John laughed to himself, remembering how Mycroft had told him once that Sherlock had initially dreamed of being a pirate. Perhaps a little human boy was still alive inside his almost robotically stoic best friend, after all.

"We have reason to believe that a modern day society of Rum Runners, are making very dramatic illegal exploits of unauthorized alcohol sales from distilleries in the Caribbean Islands, and along the English Channel, convening somewhere along the Thames Estuary..." Mycroft said, slowly and carefully, the situation sounding utterly absurd.

"We already even have enough evidence for a file ,mate. Apparently..." Lestrade began and cleared his throat..."One of them broke ranks,...and we found him rather graphically executed and hanging up along the Thames this morning."

"Which is why I'm here...I did the post-mortem." Molly added, with a smile that made John nervous.

Sherlock nodded, and then his eyes lit up as if something had clicked in place...John looked at him, understanding.

"Oh God...Harry!"

"What?" Mycroft and Greg asked at the same moment.

John swallowed, "My sister...is a terrible alcoholic, a gambler, a cheat, accused of several counts of embezzlement, imprisoned for mishandling money at least 3 times,(one of those times, it was actually Sherlock that ratted her out, and she never has forgiven us for that...) Well, she called me earlier..."

"And programmed a GPS locator to your phone. Now...why would she have done that, do you wonder?" Sherlock said, suddenly standing up, eyes on fire.

"Unless...she's involved herself too deeply this time...waded out into the Dark Water, did you, Harriet, dear?...Lestrade, you need to bring Harriet Watson in for questioning ,at once! Major."

The Major leaped to his feet,( which was no mean feat for a man that had been permanently handicapped in many ways from near-death by fire-fight) and saluted, eager to be of service.

" Enhance surveillance of John and Molly's general comings and goings..."

"What about you?" John asked, temper suddenly flaring, not wanting to think of Sherlock being at risk again.

"Why...me...exactly? Not that I-I mean-I do appreciate it, but!" Molly began.

Sherlock turned and gave John a "Don't argue with me" sort of look.

"Why the both of you? It's obvious, isn't it? You're Harriet Watson's brother, and Sherlock Holmes' infamously best friend. If Harry needed a bargaining chip, she'd definitely sell you, because selling you out, sells me out, sells Mycroft out, sells MI5 out, which automatically compromises MI6. For any chaotically criminal thinker, that would be a rather tempting bargain...I mean, we've had this lesson before ,boys and girls, does nobody remember the motive of our last two cases abroad? Someone is looking to compromise the Secret Services again! And ,as for you, Molly, you're the one that did the post-mortem on their recent execution. They'll want to take you out of the equation, because you automatically know too much, having hands-on experience with their methods of death! It doesn't take my skills to see what's going on-this is child's play, pirates and wooden swords!"

"Yes,...how exactly did you put 2 and 2 together? Couldn't Harry's call have coincidently fallen on the same morning as this case is presented you?" asked the Major.

"I'm a detective! I don't believe in "coincidence". I have all the evidence I need to form the theory. Harry's history as a cheat, would put her in the perfect position to have been involved with what I hereby dub as the "Estuary Trade". The fact that she called John, only roughly 25 minutes before the lot of you arrive, suggests that she has some preconceived knowledge of the meeting. The fact that she has run a GPS locator program on her own brother's mobile, and that she would have some preconceived knowledge of a meeting of confidential information, that was unscheduled, in my kitchen, suggests that she is keeping tabs on the lot of you. Go ahead, open your phones, prove me wrong!"

Each one of them pulled out their phones, even Major and Mrs. Hudson.

"Oh my God!" Greg groaned. For as surely as Sherlock had said it, there was a GPS location device on the control panel of his smart phone's software.

"Coincidence?" Sherlock asked, smiling darkly.

"So you've convinced me ,Sherlock." the Major gasped, baffled.

Mycroft swallowed..." It appears that the sooner we contact Ms. Watson...the better..."


	4. Chapter 4 Of Broken Homes

**Chapter 4: Of Broken Homes~**

The ride in the cab to New Scotland Yard was a very quiet one. Sherlock could read from the way John held his shoulder tight, and the tense way he leaned forward to peer out the windows ,when they were taking a very familiar route through the City, that he was keyed up about seeing his sister.

Sherlock's soul was deeper than his mind. To have even caught a glimpse of it through all his Darkness, you would have to be an extremely special person to him. It's just like the life going on in the depths of a lake, when the surface is frozen solid by Winter. Under his steel exterior, and almost cold-blooded ways with people, he was very human. Felt great amounts of caring, and generosity. Truly wanted to help his fellow-man. Felt an agony most people cannot fathom from watching suffering, this being the impetus that had driven him to seek justice for it...

There was no suffering he felt like John Watson's pain. The man was the candle of his spirit, if John's world, his light, started to go dark, it left Sherlock in an abysmal Blackness one could feel emanating off of him for miles. This deep brooding Darkness, roiled like a storm-cloud in him now, growing heavier with thoughts of what traumatic things were set on the scales of John's heart.

Like a shadow looms across a familiar room, and no one pays it any heed, Sherlock had always been there, in the backdrop of John's life. The Shadow always hears more because he tells you nothing...sees more because no one observes him. He had been watching at every heart-break of John's life, he had been weighing the scales of the pain that his brother endured, and a great load of it, yes, even,daresay, the brunt of it, he had taken upon himself.

Sherlock had told John "everything" about his torment experiences when they had been in Helsinki. Or ,at least, so John had been lead to believe. But at that moment in time, Sherlock only told John what things he had vividly remembered. He did not tell him the things that were still hazy to him, because of their utmost severity. But as time wore on, and he was home for longer, and away from Moriarty's battlefield, and breathing in the London fog again, he began to remember every hour of agony that he had endured, in photographic detail.

Only Sherlock Holmes knows the true story of the days of dealing with Moriarty's Network. Only he knows the depth of the exquisite pain that he has experienced, and experiences still, in varying degrees. And only he knows the absolute enormity of the sacrifices he very willingly made for John's safety. The sacrifices he is prepared to make for him again ,a trillion fold if need be...

Harriet. He has always secretly despised her. She had come to visit at the School after class ,once. That had been the first time Sherlock had met her. He wouldn't see her again, until he and John were adults, living together in Baker Street, when he had taken the case that connected her to laundering money to a mansion in the finer neighbourhoods of London, that had doubled as an illegal club.

He had always known that Harry was conspiring something purely wicked. As if she was looking for a way to bring her snobby ,high-class, military personnel ,reputable family to a very creative ruin. He always knew that this case would come,eventually.

Oh, how he loved, how he HATED to be right!

And what was worse...John would be the one to suffer for this. He had come from a broken home. And the home Sherlock had provided him had been broken up by criminal activity, and death.

They stepped out of the cab. John paid the driver. Sherlock studied John. Worried for him. Loved him more than John could even imagine. It took his breath away, most of the time.

The rest of the time it was his driving force. His absolute will to live, was to see that John got the war hero's honor, the respect, and the well-being that he honestly did deserve.

Because while heroes as a general rule didn't exist, John was an exception to this rule. And while Sherlock wasn't an angel ,he was most definitely on their side. He swallowed the knot of pain and self-loathing that rises incessantly in the pit of a torture survivor's stomach, one more time as always, and set his mind to the task. How to catch an angel, to keep him from falling. How to trade places with a falling star. Sherlock was no angel, he was a scapegoat, and he esteemed no ledge too high to leap from for this man's security...

* * *

><p>They step into a room with no windows, two dark doors, and a long black table.<p>

There sits Harry, obviously related to John, but her hair is more auburn than his dirty blonde, and her eyes are a bit more green. She licks her teeth like a hungry wolf.

"Oi...Jonny!It's been ages ,sweetheart!...Lizard...I suppose you're the one who called me in ,then?"

Lizard. That was Harry's personal name for Sherlock. It was a favorite pastime of hers to come up with abusive names for Sherlock, and to run him down. Much like Sally Donovan, and if the two ever met, they might actually be fast friends... John shivered and sat down.

"You know why we have called you, Harriet. Let's not waste time, then. Why did you put the program on our mobile phones?..." Sherlock began.

Harry roiled with laughter..."Why does any one do anything, Lizzy?"

Sherlock beat his fist on the table. He hadn't even a quarter of the patience John did, when it came to people.

"You learned those words from someone else...didn't you? Well...let me tell you for fact...for absolute surety. Your master is dead...So is the Accomplice, and the Kingdom of Terror has fallen. There isn't any piece of the puzzle of chaos that is left for you...I am sorry..."

"Oh, Lizzy, did you honestly think I CARED about what Moriarty's actual reasons were?"

"What? What's going on? You worked" John's head is spinning. Sherlock closed his eyes, feeling as if his spirit had become a wormhole inside him, sucking his whole sentient being into its Black Hole pull.

Of course, John would have to be _here_ of all places ,right now. Of course John would have to be let down again. Failed again. Betrayed again...

Perfect, honest John. Who deserved nothing but good, and received nothing but bad, because that's what people do...And yet...we care about them anyway? (Oh, the tragedy and beauty at once, that is love...)

"You worked ...for Moriarty?"

"It's really funny how Lizz here can take just a little wisp o' something, like what I just said, and turn a whole case out of it, and arrest people! Wizard ,that. Really, better than Scooby Doo, I'd buy it any day. Yes, John. Yes. I worked for Moriarty, but not in any of his great life's works type things. I was his bartender. That club you and Sherlock flushed me out of like yesterday's oats? That was old Jimbo's favorite..."

Sherlock and John both sat there, utterly stunned.

"Oh yeah...It was lovely. I could forget about Clara, so long as I had Jim. All I had to do was tell him secrets all about you ,John. I was his VIP, he sought me out personally, on account of you! And he treated me like a queen! I inherited a big bit of his business, you know? That's when I met up with the pirates...You know the Rum Runners, the "Estuary Trade"? Oh, yeah, you guessed right, Lizzy, I've bugged the lot of you for them too, good luck figuring out how to fix that! Now, I don't know exactly what they want with you...But I made a deal with the devil, and it's all yo ho ho and a never empty bottle of rum for me as long as I launder the secrets of the World's Only Consulting Detective, and his little pet."

John stood up dizzyingly fast, and stormed out of the room.

Sherlock rose more slowly, cold and black, having been crowned "Icarus, King in Terror" for a very good reason.

"You've been most helpful ,Harriet. And I will see to it that you are hanged rather soon." he smiled, almost charmingly, and spun on his heel, shoes tapping like nails in the coffin, against the floor.

Harriet smirked, and let herself slip back into her chair,

"Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!" she cried out in the dim room, letting her voice echo off the walls, and into the empty silence.


	5. Chapter 5 Break Your Bottles Like Chains

**Chapter 5: Break Your Bottles Like Chains~**

Sherlock is caught up in the thrill of the hunt, in the chase... In the wind and the rain, and the river silt soaking up to his knee caps...

Comes trudging home, empty inside, and throbbing from old wounds. Wondering about John. Kicking himself for not being here, but wondering what he would have been able to have done, or to say, to make it any better? Sympathy wasn't going to make what Harry had done right...

Sherlock doesn't bother to wash,or change. Does Mrs. Hudson the favor of taking his mud-soaked shoes off, but doesn't bother with his coat. He knows where to look, now that the day is done. This is an old skeleton that's been hiding in the closet for years, a learned behaviour his young doctor isn't proud of, but it's something he does when he takes a serious blow to his heart.

Sherlock pushes the door of John's room open, so quietly as to make ghosts seem as loud as elephants racing on drums.

There John sat, still sober, but not for long.

He was holding a bottle of whiskey, looking at it with a great amount of guilt. He twirled a shot glass in his fingers, and stared into space. Wanted to slip off into inebriated sleep, (never mind that he hated the awful tonic) ,but knew what it would do. His dreams were always worse when the poison clouded his mind. And he had promised Sherlock a long time ago...that he wasn't going to be like his Dad and Mum and sister. That he wasn't going to let drink be the answer for all his problems...

So why was he still holding the bottle? Why couldn't he just throw it away? Wasn't this that same concoction that had torn his family apart? They had been somewhat happy it seemed like, when John was a little boy...

He was still fighting the same old war, with his Genie in the Bottle, that didn't want to be set free, no matter how hard John tried to let him go.

But it wasn't his fight, in the end. This time the soldier need only surrender to someone who could give his Genie release. In the end the genie in John's bottle, could not grant him his wish of escape from the Hell of being alone...

But Sherlock could.

He slipped up,shadow that he was, and stood directly behind John.

There was silence. The two of them never really needed words...John knew Sherlock was secretly hurt by the fact that he'd turned to the bottle again for help, when the only one he ever need consult was his detective, who could get to the root of his problem with just threads of information... Held the pieces to his heart after all, it being his own, and was the master of puzzles...

John laughed back tears. Oh, of course, stupid! Of course... All this angst over not having a family to belong to. To be understood by. But here was his family. Here was the one who understood him,and no one understood him better. All this angst over what people thought or said, especially the uptight Watson clan. And here was that one person whose tongue was as sharp as a Samurai's blade, and he was as skilled with cutting words as the best of swordsmen...Here was one that was so blatantly honest as to nearly pummel you with the reality of his thoughts, with the full grasp of the situation. And yet cold-blooded, calculating, and utterly cruel creature he was rumored to be, a Freak Not Natural, no one had loved John more perfectly, or with any greater tenderness, when that's what he needed...

In the end, Sherlock didn't have to say a word. John turned around, and handed him the bottle, the glass, and all.

And Sherlock took them to the window, and dropped them on the street, watching them break all over the sidewalk, meeting as brutal an end as once he had.

Sherlock turned to meet John's gaze. He was standing beside him, and had watched it all fall. Remembered that once the precious contents of Sherlock's soul had shattered just like that all over the street, and people had gawked ,and stepped around his broken pieces, just the same.

And the genie was forgotten, for the Miracle-Maker was right here, and John swallowed the Stone-of-Being-Rejected, and reached out, and fell into Sherlock's arms.

Sherlock drew John as close as he could. And that Watson curse was carried away in the East Wind. And the Old Genie was free now...

And Sherlock didn't talk about the case. Didn't lament that he had gotten no where today, didn't rant about how the bloody rain had washed all his evidence away, or about how Anderson had tramped through his crime scene...

One thought pervaded his amazing mind. One thought that hardened into volition of its own.

He was going to take John Watson's case. He was going to solve the mystery of the Rum Runners, and he was going to bring the Watson Clan to the light, expose all their dark secrets, air their dirty laundry. They weren't worthy of the son they had created, and so he was going to destroy their idolized reputation and bring them down to the dust, like all the other Kingdoms he'd left smoldering in his wake. And he was going to do it for John ,to vindicate him, because ,by God ,he wasn't going to stand idly by and let his sacrifices as an Army Medic go unsung! He was of the belief that everyone should get what was rightfully theirs, honor for the honorable, which that was definitely John...And punishment for criminals.

No matter the cost, Sherlock made a sworn pact with himself, ceiled in the blood that was streaming through his veins with the sudden renewed thrill of the hunt. For a piece of the puzzle came to him then, as he held John,( who slouched against him, utterly spent), as close as he could, face pressed into his golden hair. He had reason to believe that if Harry was involved in all of this, and Harry's lifestyle was enabled a great deal by her father and mother, then that meant that Colonel and Mrs. Watson were also involved in the Estuary Trade. He would bring the Colonel into his power. He would get justice for Donald Watson's son, whose murder may not have been acted upon, but had been promised. And ,for Sherlock, that was enough...


	6. Chapter 6 Gather Your Ghosts

**Chapter 6: Gather Your Ghosts~**

Locked in a casket.

Dead man alive, scratching at the casket, the soft fabric liner feeling like octopus tentacles shrouded in lace,as they curled up his neck. His spine prickles, he feels the spiders all over him and knows( because Sherlock knows the poison all too well) that he has been drugged, that he's withdrawing because its been a long time since the needle lanced his veins.

Chains rattle. There's a struggle. Of course the young army doctor will be harder to bag. Slipping a tiger into a wet paper sack would have been easier.

There's a thud, Sherlock hears John gasp, as the wind goes out of him.

"They found us rather quickly. Bloody GPS."Sherlock thinks. The Darkness creeps through his veins like a bitter old friend. He fights it, but it breaks in like waves through window panes.

"Hello, Akhlys." Sherlock thinks, calling his poison after the name of the Greek goddess of Eternal Night.

Darkness...


	7. Chapter 7 Gone With the Ships

**Chapter 7: Gone With the Ships~**

The Major wakes up on the floor. Hears the sound of somebody coughing, and trying to use a fire-extinguisher with shaking hands...

"Major?" she asks, voice quavering. "Major? Are you dead? Well, that doesn't make any sense to ask, but if you're not, please...say that you're not, ummm..."

Major sits up. He's in the Baker Street flat living room, and the furniture has been set on fire. Molly is here, and then he remembers she is under orders to report to him in the mornings, because she is under his protection, as the official self-appointed body-guard of Sherlock Holmes, and all his colleagues.

Now he remembers how he got to be lying on the floor.

_Door kicked in. A casket passed hand over hand up the stairs._

_He's at the stair landing in a flash, tackles one of them. Is thrown off his shoulders, is tasered in the neck, falls heavy into the wall, uses his cane , comes up swinging with it._

_There's a struggle. It's just himself to 10 different guys. Another 10 are up stairs. _

_"Jim's old girlfriend said he had the charts!" a voice whispers too loudly._

_Major's head swims. Sherlock and John are asleep, and once they finally do go down, they are almost impossible to wake up again! Right now the both of them are easy targets._

_He tries to shout for his boys, for Mrs. Hudson to call the police, but then a rope is pushed between his teeth. He tosses his head, like a steer bull forced into the rodeo corral. They laugh at him, spit on him, and then they light the rag on fire. He spits it out, it catches on the curtains. He dives into the middle of them, thundering his way up stairs, blowing the whistle he has as an alarm for the boys, to tell them theirs immediate danger._

_A man with a dart gun spins around, and spits the venomous pin right between his eyes. Akhlys wins this round._

"Molly, do you have Mycroft Holmes' contact information?"

"Yeah, a whole phone book full, why? Why...is everything...burned?...Where are Sherlock and John? Major...what? what is going on?"

"Gone. Gone with the ships. Come, girl, we have maybe a window of 48 hours before we lose them for good. We've got to get a move on!"

The Major hauled himself up, retrieved his cane from the smoke, and pulled Molly to her feet.

"Call Mycroft. Tell him he needs to arrange the two of us a meeting with Harriet Watson. We're gonna need a GPS locator system of our own."

"You're bringing...me...with you?" she asks, slowly.

"Of course I am! I can't let you out of my sight! And the closer you are to the action, the farther you'll be from their spies. They'll never suspect it!"

And with that the Major and Molly were out the door of Baker Street, the young pathologist dialing Mycroft with trembling fingers...

"This...oh my God...this is _really _happening..." Molly gasped, eyes wide in horror.

Major leaped on the front of a taxi, "Take me and the lady to New Scotland Yard! It's an emergency!"


	8. Chapter 8 Of the Sons of the Keres

**Chapter 8: Of the Sons of the Keres~**

Sherlock wakes up,in a huge black sack, like a body bag. He can see through the sheer material just enough to see that John is also tied up in a large black sack beside him, breathing heavily, still under the influence of the drugs they've been put under.

This isn't Sherlock's first abduction. Coming to is routine for him. He makes rapid deductions.

_We're being held in the cargo holds, this is a commercial ship, initially intended for shipping fresh herring catches, and later refurbished for automotive transportation,from a limited supplier that still ships over water._

_We're somewhere near the ships south-East end. This shipment is damaged,God, alcoholic seepage gives me a headache, no wonder John is still out! We're showing out of the Estuary now, we're making an express trip to the Caribbean with this damaged shipment,taking it back to its original supplier. Something isn't quiet right, no the crew is walking on pins and they're speaking Greek, why are they speaking Greek?_

He twists his neck to hear better.

"You know the "Keres" won't be pleased if we're behind schedule." says an older man, his accent deeper than the second speaker.

_Keres. Name of the daimon spirits in Greek mythology that proceeded over torment and death..._

"Oh, Mother will have to be patient if she really wants a share in the profits." says a second voice.

"Do you think its true?What they said about the little man? Do you think he actually has those charts?"

"If anybody can get it out of him, it'll be Mother..."

The others start laughing.

Silence.

Sherlock groans inwardly.

"_They think that you've got something that they need_..." he thinks, and crawls protectively close to John..."_So the objective is to make them certain that I stole it from you, and have hidden it somewhere for safe keeping..."_

With his work cut out for him,Sherlock wraps his partially bound arms over the shapeless bag that John is swathed in, and holds his breath.

Waiting...


	9. Chapter 9 Shipment to Mother

**Chapter 9: Shipment to Mother~**

Harriet was surrounded. Mycroft Holmes stood over her like a dark eagle, eyes flashing fire, hands seeming to glow with the ice within his soul, so cold was his rage.

Greg Lestrade stood beside him, a taser in his hand, should he be compelled to use it. Major and Molly stood at an eager attention, ready to embark, wherever it was that she sent them.

"It's like I told Sherlock, I don't know what they wanted with them? You honestly expect me to know anything about it? I'm a party girl, I've wasted more brain cells than I could ever afford!" she giggled, trying to sound innocent, playing coy.

Mycroft smiled, everything about him so gathered and professional, that, comparing him to his brother ,whose darkness was a bit more littered with passionate outbursts of anger, sometimes, if you ignored the fact that Sherlock had actually come up out of his grave, he was the more frightening of the two.

"If either of our brother's lives are forfeit because of this , I make you a solemn vow. I will come up with a very creative ending for you."

Harriet thought about this.

"Take my phone."

"Yours?" Greg asked, nostrils flaring, wanting to chin Harry really good, never mind that she was a woman.

"Yeah. I can look at the one GPS program you will need most from my own mobile."

"Really? Whose?" Mycroft asked, smiling delighted.

"My father, Colonel Watson. That's who the pirates are taking our brothers to..."

There was a silence that shook the room.

"Don't looked so shocked. My Dad isn't the "knight in white satin" he's always wanted all of his colleagues to believe he is...He's made a deal with a devil, the same as I did. Or more precisely with the Mother of the Keres...And be assured, she will not show mercy to any one...Sherlock and John will suffer greatly before they burn!"

"Lestrade, get her out of my sight!" Mycroft spat, horrified that the Watson's could have so violently betrayed their only son and brother.

He turned and placed the phone in Molly's hands.

"Go in the knowledge that the eyes of the United Kingdom ,and the God that crowned Britain, are watching over you."

And with that he turned, and swept out of the room, pulling his phone out of his pocket, getting straight to business.

"Come along, Molly. We've got business down at the docks." the Major said.

Molly held her breath, silently praying that this story had a happy ending.


	10. Chapter 10 To Deliver Your Soul

** Chapter 10: To Deliver Your Soul~**

It may have been hours ,it may have been days. He was so dehydrated that he'd been in a daze after he determined where they were headed.

He's dumped out of the bag , like so many pounds of flour. Hits his knees with all his weight, the pain shooting to the top of his head, like a nail through wood.

John is also dumped out of his bag, and now Sherlock can finally look at him. He's a wreck, golden hair standing up like the mane on a young male lion. His eyes dart around having no memory past the night that Sherlock took the whiskey bottle from him. There's no fear on his face, John is a soldier through and through, and has a heart stronger than steel. But he is royally confused, and looks at Sherlock pleadingly, as if begging him to explain what in blazes is happening.

The crew is standing over them now. Some of them are Greek. Some are Turkish. A man in a deep purple turban, jeans, and a faded t-shirt that reads" Black Sabbath" across the front stoops over them.

"Good morning , boys. Sleep well?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"You speak English; that's fortunate, my Turkish is rusty. I suppose we should skip right to business, then. You want those charts, right? You think Watson has them? Well, he doesn't, I stole them from him years ago, and hid them for my gain. And I won't breathe a word as to what I did with them, if any harm comes to him."

John's eyes go wide as an owls. He knows very well that he's never had any precious charts that could have been stolen. Whatever is happening, Sherlock is trying to keep him alive, probably to the end that he will be hurt ,or even killed. John suddenly isn't sure whether he wants to hug him, or punch him.

The Crew looks taken aback.

The Turk sneers, wiping his sweaty palms off on his fading jeans,

"Well...at least we've got the interrogation out of the way then, Sherlock Holmes. So ,... you are just as observant as they say?"

"They say a lot of things...But most of it isn't true. Anything you think you know about me, is probably severely...underrated...In case you didn't know, I am an unholy terror. In some circles I am known as Icarus..."

The faces of the crew blanch again.

"Sherlock?" John mutters...trying to assess the situation, head still swirling, never having been on such drugs before, the only clear thought in his head is empathy for when Sherlock got taken by the Vipers, understanding for how he stayed addicted for quite a long time, and hopes that the both of them could get out of this in one piece.

"Because of the Code, then, I am not allowed to harm either of you, knowing that you are Icarus, and his sworn protected. However, my master, Colonel Watson, is under no such Code, so consider this voyage a respite..."

"Colonel? Colonel..W-Watson?!" John stammered.

Sherlock bowed his head, and closed his eyes on the horror. Why? Why did he always have to be right?

" You know him I take it?"

"He's my father..."

The Crew looks at each other with strange glances.

" I apologize. But it isn't the Colonel you will need to be wary of, so much as the medium he and his wife now consult for everything...We are taking you to and island in the Caribbean sea, that is also a military test ground of the United Kingdom. I read about you boys. You remember your adventure in Baskerville, and what that was like? Consider the place I am taking you as "Baskerville Island."..."

And with that ,the Turk, now understood to be the Captain, turned away, giving directives to his men.

Silently Sherlock took John's hand..."If it kills,...I will find a way to deliver your soul from such evil!"

John clutched his hand back, "Please, don't talk about your getting killed, mate, it's too early for all this. You'd think they could have provided breakfast. I want my money back!"

The crew thought it was odd that their captives were suddenly giggling like school girls, when previous captives would have been crying the like instead...


	11. Chapter 11 There is No Return

** Chapter 11: There is No Return~**

The Major and Molly approached the Estuary, and a cold wind began to blow, out of the ashes of Winter, somewhere else in the World.

A man suddenly approached them.

"Wait here, would you,please?" the Major asked Molly.

She sat down on a large wooden box, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She was only wearing a thin green sweater, and thin white blouse, and a pair of dark green capris. It was warmer when she got dressed this morning.

Something in the air made her feel very small. Like the very last dandelion at the end of the summer, that one little breeze can pull all of the seeds away from. Something told her what the Major and the man (one of Mycroft's agents, come to give last-minute debriefing on the mission) were talking about was not a good thing.

Anxiousness for Sherlock was swirling in her stomach, as fast as a washing machine on spin cycle. She wanted to throw up, but knew what he would say if he were here:

"Ah-quit that sniveling! Makes your mouth look smaller than it actually is,which is saying quite a lot!"

For some reason, he liked to constantly tease her about her looks. It didn't really bother her though, well, most of the time. He could be rather a beast, couldnt he? The thought made her laugh, which made her worry more.

She was worried about John too. She really genuinely cared about him, and all, but Sherlock was her best friend. And sometimes it seemed like he was the only person that could actually see her ,never mind that sometimes _seeing _ her meant he would say things like, "Oh,you have a date tonight, don't you ,Molly dear? Yes that dress does add quite a bit of padding about your breasts?", or, "Ah, no, no, really you didn't have to add THAT much lipstick, your lips went from being the size of a kitten's to being more like a duck!"

She wrinkled her nose. Yes, he was horrible. But he belonged to her. And she wanted him back.

Even if it meant giving her life.

The Major walked to her , face almost grey. He was holding a small package of syringes.

Molly stood up to meet him, knowing this was _bad _, but ready to have it over with.

"Mycroft's men have gotten to the bottom of why the boys were abducted. Our mission has been compromised. Even the clean phones Mycroft gave the lot of us ,..." ( for he had of course, don't be silly)

"...Have been overridden with those GPS locators. Harriet sold the program, one developed to be a GPS virus, that Moriarty gave her back during their romance...Those pirates can have unlimited access to us as long as we are in contact with the home office. Which is why , the only way to get to Sherlock and John now, the only safe passage, is via the zoo transfer carrier vessel to your port side, which is actually under the command of our friends the pirates. We 'll be bugged by our bosses , of course, so they can make sure we are on the right course, but we can receive no directives from them..."

Molly nodded, knowing in her bones this was not the bad news the Major was grey in the face for needing to give. He swallowed, and then let a little puff of air,

"We will board the ship in a crate, with some of the bags of animal feed removed so we can fit. It will be dark and cramped. There will be very limited supply of oxygen. It will be our best chance, quite frankly our only chance, and we may survive...if we use this."

He held up the syringes, "This is a drug that will lower our heart rates enough to survive at least to the first port on the way to Haiti, which is the general vicinity of where the boys have been taken. Then we can get out of the crate unsuspected, and be mobile on the deck, enough to scout out our own way. Once safely in Haiti, Mycroft plans to meet us on Rochelais Reef, so we can map out the general locale where the boys are hostage...However, while the drug is supposed to save our lives,the extended period of time which we must be under its influence ...could actually kill us."

The reality of the situation hit Molly like a ball from a 20 pound cannon. Her entire life flashed before her eyes, as if she were walking to execution,and she felt her heart fluttering like a bird. Death had always been close to her, being a pathologist, she knew very well what the cause of death from bradycardia drugs overdose would be, what it would feel like...

The Major nodded, seeing all the emotions pass over her face.

"Whatever you may have heard about me, I should like to be the one to tell you myself, that I am not a fan of collateral damage. That is why I am giving you the choice. Molly, if it is the only way to save them, would you die for your friends? If not...I will leave you here, I will hide you somehow,...you can walk away..."

Molly laughed at the irony of all of this. The only way to live was to possibly die?

Suddenly, she saw Sherlock standing behind the Major and off to the side, as vividly as if he were actually here. Remembered the night that he asked for her to stay with him, and talk him through his decision to meet with Moriarty on top of the roof. She had played the role of shrink, not pathologist,that night, listening as he made his last confessions, not to a priest, but to her. That had been the night before he jumped off of St. Bart's. That had been the night before he died...

She remembered. She was there. He could say what he wanted to, could swear as violently as he had at Baskerville, but he had been absolutely terrified that night. Had been utterly lonely that night. And angry too, at the way that people had driven him to that rooftop, because they didn't understand. And he had had regrets. How he could have been a better friend to John.

That was the biggest one. She remembered...

She was not going to have the same regret in regards to him.

" The night that Sherlock died..." she began..."I was with him...And..." she swallowed, "And he had every exscuse to give up the fight, and turn himself in. He could have let Moriarty win,...and kill John, and Greg, and Mrs. Hudson...And me too, probably, when Jim found out who I really was to Sherlock...uhh,...his assistant, you know... If this were him ...in my place...he wouldn't think twice about doing the same for me. He would say...that death is the inevitable. Not to be scared, because being scared of the inevitable is really silly...

I'm going to have to die one day ,Major. If it's today, and if it's for him...then I think that's ..well...a good way to go...And...and really ,thank you...thank you for giving me the choice..."

She smiled bravely.

Major smiled back.

"Sherlock would say that was sound logic. But he doesn't know everything,no matter that he thinks he does! That 's courage, simple and beautiful...And I consider it an honor to die with such a brave lady as you are, if die we must."

With a sad smile, Molly took the Major's hand. She laughed to herself, thinking it was like being lead across the Mortal Veil, by your guardian angel. He lead her to where the crates were being packed on deck.

One was already provided with a space large enough for the two of them to slide into. She swallowed, thinking that it looked like a tomb.

"I'll go first..you're better with needles, I'd wager... " the Major said, holding out an arm. Molly held her breath, and pushed the liquid into his veins.

"Good girl, it will take about 5 minutes to work, which will give me time to help you." Major said, and took her arm.

Why was she so afraid? What would Sherlock do if this were him? She was almost ready to cry, and chewed her lip.

And in the end, as the needle went into her arm, it was Sherlock that came to save her. She didn't feel the drugs enter her system, only memories ran through her veins, through the playground in her memory where she met him long ago...

_"Hello. And what are you doing?" he had asked._

_She looked up, and froze._

_Her very first thought was that he looked like an angel. Very tall for 7 years old, silver green eyes, slender as a nymph spirit, wild raven curls, a blue sweater and jeans in place of the dark garb he'd wear as a man. A big red dog sat obediently by his feet. Redbeard...she remembered the friendly old dog's name..._

_"The mouse. I'm trying to find out why it died.I want to be a pathologist when I grow up. I saw a show about it on my Grand-mum's telly."_

_The boy had wrinkled a brow. And took a pace around the mouse. Molly have expected him to make a hiss sound at how gross it was, call her a freak because most little girls don't poke dead mice with tiny sticks (she knew better than to touch it with her hands)_

_"Hmm...well we're in a playground. Nobody would poison a mouse in a playground..But it's not squished...so nobody stepped on it either..." _

_And to her surprise the boy had plucked a twig up from the ground, and plopped down in the sand beside her, ready to help her poke at that mouse till the sun went down...and they never did determine why it died..._

_But they had written down a whole autopsy report any way, over a page in Molly's coloring book she'd brought with her._

_"Results were inconclusive..." Sherlock had said. "You should research more things, get more practice. It's an awful lot of work to become anything important, you know..."_

She smiled, as sleep began to take her, unaware that this could be the end. She hoped it wasn't...She wanted to see him again.

The memory turned suddenly to a hallucination.

_"Molly!"_  
><em>"Sherlock? What...what's wrong?"<em>

_She woke up under an oak tree. Their oak tree, in Hyde Park, where they used to meet, for research, a long time ago. Everything from dead frogs, to the study of the chemical compounds of worms and juice puree; that had been their field of science in their childhood._

_Only here in this dream they were full grown. She was shivering. Her sweater was gone._

_"That's my girl, I knew I'd find you!" Sherlock laughed, relieved. "Come, dear, we need to go!" he held out a hand._

_"Where?"_

_"Trust me, Molly. We have to leave. Now."_

_She held her breath. There was such urgency in the eyes of haunting silver and green._

_"Ok." she whispered._

_He took off his coat, reached and wrapped her up in it._

_There was sudden warmth, and darkness._

Molly fell asleep then, tucked up in the crate of the zoo-ship on it's way to the Caribbean, Major Sholto tucked up in the cramped box beside her. She didn't know if she would be waking up again, but it was alright...because Sherlock was there ,guiding her through her dreams...


	12. Chapter 12 There is No Where to Run

** Chapter 12: There is No Where to Run~**

John woke up, being rolled onto the shore in a huge whiskey barrel, that broke against a large rock upon impact. His head was spiraling, as much from the sea, as from dehydration, and the drug he was on.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sherlock ,likewise being rolled in a large barrel, and when he made impact with the stone, he swaggered out on all fours, shivering like a half-lit chihuahua.

He was swearing under his breath at the pirates, trying to come up with some sort of curse that was bad enough to call them in English, and English failing him miserably, he started shouting at them in Turkish. Until he wavered, and wobbled, and turned to look at the island that opened before him, tucked in the Caribbean's shadow, like the circles of Dante in the midst of the sea.

"Neat!" he gasped, a sideways grin turning up the corners of his nostrils, making one eye to squint against the sinking sun.

"Right, you WOULD find being abducted by pirates, and being marooned on some drug test site/ abandoned tourist attraction to be NEAT!" John spat, spouting sea water rather than steam out of his ears.

For it was true. They were now stranded, not expecting any means of escape, on an unchartered island around 30 miles south west of Rochelais Reef, that used to be a heavily toured attraction, but was abandoned for "unknown reasons".

Unknown reasons being magic pipes full of Baskerville style hallucinogenics, sticking up every where there was a palm tree.

"This CASE, John! Thank you for having worthless parents, and a turn coat sister, it has proved to be anything but boring!" he cried, getting to his feet, folding sand encrusted hands together, like a mild-mannered child.

John knelt in the sand. If anybody but Sherlock had said such thoughtless words to him, he would be highly insulted right about now. But with Sherlock that was as close to a vote of confidence that everything happens for a reason, that one should look on the bright side, as well as highest compliment ,that one would ever get. In a twisted way, those tactless words lifted John's spirits, and he shook his head, easing himself to his feet.

"Yeah...a bit more boring...would be good, for a change." he said , clenching his lips together, as he stared into the chemical jungle.

It was almost indistinguishable from any other island, save that, when the wind blew, the reeds would bow over, revealing metal poles fixed unmoving to the ground.

"No, really!" Sherlock gasped, practically purring with laughter, " It's Christmas! Just wait till we bust all of this! How much fun this is going to be, John! We are currently the envy of every street junkie extant, with all of these hallucinations at our disposal!"

John sighed. Sherlock was giddy. The Pirates, particularly the Captain, were giving him very weird looks.

"Sorry. He's...he's always like this...it has nothing to do with the sun, or the barrel voyage, or the drugs, or the fact that you are probably the lousiest hosts since the crew of the Titanic." John sighed, looking the Captain straight in the eyes.

The Captain blinked, as if he was trying to process all this information. Could Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson be actually far greater Freaks than the entire Universe had forewarned him?!

Sherlock spun on his heel, ignoring John, with a childlike smile on his face,

"Right, Admiral. How much for the tour?"

"I wouldn't give them a silver paper wrapped chocolate nickel for it; it was an absolute RUBBISH cruse!" John spat, indignantly.

"Mr. Holmes...You do realize that you have been taken captive by the most powerful sea-witch yet in practice, as well as the chief executive of the current Rum Runners Guild, and his wife? There is nowhere to run, except the ocean. Nowhere to hide, except to kneel before the garish sun. It behooves me to tell you, that you are going to die here..." the Captain ventured.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "First lesson in conversational English, never use such phrases as "behooves"; you're just asking for one of those little paper dunce caps they make the naughty children wear!" he mocked.

"Now, where is this "chief executive" / worthless excuse for John's father, that I don't know why he's still upset over, considering that he was only the sperm donor in the cause and effect of his very engineering, and John ,being the absolute perfection of the science that inspired "Man", is NOTHING like him, and shouldn't waste valuable energy or thought processes caring what he thinks, much less does?"

The pirates blinked, not really understanding this rapidly spoken tangent. But John did, and was actually so flattered by it, he felt that he might cry. He coughed, trying to hide the emotion.

"Yeah...right. Your boss. Take us to him. Please? So we can get this over with, SOME TIME TODAY?!" he snapped ,instead, giving Sherlock an odd look.

The Captain swallowed, "Right this way." he said, gesturing for them to follow him.

"Sperm donor? Really? Are you suggesting I was a test tube baby?" John whispered teasingly, elbowing Sherlock in the ribs.

"No, I was merely stating the quality of the status of your father's parentage of you. Which is about the quality of a random sperm donor, hence the idiom..." Sherlock's voice trailed off into oblivion, and John looked to the sky, rolling his eyes, and praying the God behind that overbearingly bright sun for some mercy on his behalf, at the absolute RIDICULOUSNESS of this situation, and at the thought of seeing his father again...


	13. Chapter 13 Awaken To Truth

** Chapter 13: Awaken To Truth~**

_She hears his voice from out of the dark, and her head swims, the world rocking back and forth, and suddenly searingly bright and hot, as if they are riding on waves of the sun._

_ "Molly?"_

_"Sherlock?...Where?"_

_She tries to turn around,to go back into the Darkness that was Sleep. Now that she knows nothing else, she wants nothing else, but the sweet, sightless, safe feeling place of Darkness, the carelessness of Sleep._

_But he , of all people, is calling her back into a world of Light, of color and sound._

_"Molly Hooper,...you do know, that you count...That you have always counted..."_

_"Sherlock?"_

_Molly swallows, the air tastes like smoke. The fact that there is air, is suddenly troubling. She is going to have to breathe now; she's not sure if she wants to._

_"I need you again. Do you want to help me?"_

_"Of course...It's always been...my pleasure..."_

_"Then come back to the Light."_

* * *

><p>Molly wakes up.<p>

She takes a deep ,shaky breath, and lets out a tiny cry, like a baby does when its just been born. The Major laughs ,almost hysterically.

"I had faith in you!" he is saying, she's not sure why.

Then she realizes that she's lying in the sand. That there is a sky of blue...(like a wisp of fabric, she remembers about his neck, like his eyes...)above her. That the wind is blowing through her long dark (and for some reason wet) hair. That the thin green sweater she was wearing at the outset of their voyage, is now wrapped in the thick fabric of the Major's old army coat.

" You've been in a bad way for a long while, dear girl. When we got out of the box, you didn't wake up like you were supposed to. I thought you had died, at first, and I despaired for a while. But I took your vitals, and sure enough, there was a faint pulse. You...have a very strong heart deep inside you, dear girl. And that heart prevailed. You have awoken from a coma on the shores of Haiti. Welcome to the Caribbean. As soon as you are well enough to get up on your feet, we will take the ferry to the Rochelais Reef."

Molly sits up. Her head is clearing up rapidly now. The world isn't swaying and pitching, her head just feels that way. The ocean keeps rolling into her back, waves like hands, trying to help her stand.

"Sherlock...and John. They...they were captured, weren't they? So we came...to help them...and we ..took a drug to make us sleep...so we could survive the Box..."

Major is smiling and nodding.

"Yes, yes! You are recovering better than I ever hoped!"

Molly shakes her head, and water flings out of her hair. Suddenly , she freezes.

There on the beach, she sees a vision. Maybe it's more like a hallucination from the drug she is recovering from, but it's so peaceful and dreamlike that it doesn't feel like being under the influence of anything.

There stands Sherlock, with a Man. A Galilean; how she knows that, she isn't sure. And then she remembers that he _told _her that He was. That this is the Man Sherlock saw when he slipped into the Void, that 1 day and 10 hours that he was dead. That out of the void of her drug-induced coma,this Man has stepped to guide her way.

"Teacher?" she asks,eyes gone wide.

Major stops,and turns around. He doesn't see anyone. Not yet.

"Who, Molly? Who do you see?"

Molly swallowed, "The Man...from Sherlock's dream...when-when he was dead, you know..."

Major nodded,wondering what this could mean.

And just then he saw an agent of MI6 walking towards them.

"Can you stand?"

"I..I could try?"

He reaches, and helps Molly to her shaking feet. At first, she wavers, with a gasp, certain she will fall. Remembers watching Sherlock fall from behind a window,and now sickness at the feeling of falling, always racks her entire body if ever she trips.

She looks up, sees that the apparition has vanished.

"He was there...Major. The Man...and Sherlock...It was as if they were trying to tell me something."

Major nodded. "Just maybe ...they were."


	14. Chapter 14 For Now the Bones Speak

**Chapter 14: For Now the Bones Speak~**

They were lead through an impossible maze of trees, made sick from heat, and mosquito bites, and lack of water, and the drugs they were coming off of.

John was miserable, physically and mentally, anticipating reunion with his abusive parents.

Sherlock's face was expressionless. He was quite accustomed to physical discomfort, as well as torment of the body and the mind, since he set out on the business of disbanding Moriarty. John swallowed his tongue just about, and tried not to look at him, the reality of this hitting home now, more than ever. The old Sherlock would have been making an incessant snarky commentary on their treatment, and quite a mouthful of threats. But the Sherlock that survived the Network walked behind the crew of rum-runners, as placidly as a dog for a walk. No fear of torment, no anticipation of the meeting with John's father, who hated Sherlock as much, if not more than, he hated his only son.

When Sherlock laid eyes on the Colonel, he smiled, an almost delighted, but at the same time utterly false, sick, hatred-laced smile.

And then he laughed, a blood-curdling laugh, that made John's hair stand on end.

John's father stood there, on the bend of a beach of Baskerville island, in his old military dress uniform, John's mother on his right hand, and an ancient mulatto woman at his left,wearing old and worn jeans, and a red top that tied in the front, over the top of a sun-bleached tie dye t-shirt. Not the look that John had expected from the most powerful practitioner of voodoo to date.

The Colonel raised a brow at Sherlock.

"What...pray tell...are you laughing at?"he asked...with a sidelong, witheringly hateful glance at John, that made John want to withdraw into Darkness, and never crawl back into the Sun again. His mother smiled at him, and he couldn't tell if it was sympathetically, or if it was a forced smile, to hide her disdain of him. Oh..how he wished to be somewhere else!

Sherlock shook off the hands of the men that had constrained him, having strong-armed him most of the way through the woods.

"You know, exactly WHAT,...Solomon."

There was a gut-wrenching silence.

Lydia Watson turned to look at her husband ,mouth gaping, shaking her head, about to protest such an absurd statement.

John coughed.

"Wh-what did you...just?" he asked Sherlock, this not making any sense at all.

Solomon Watson was the name of his only uncle, Donald's identical twin brother, who supposedly had been killed in a car accident when John was 7. He didn't remember that very well, and his mother never talked about it. The only thing John _did _remember was that after Uncle "Sal"'s death, his dad started to act really awfully towards him, and stayed drunk...always.

The Colonel's face turned a dark purplish color, and he swallowed...enraged into silence. Sherlock nodded.

"Now everything is perfectly clear...The reason you took John's friendship with the World's Only Consulting Detective so adversely. The reason you threatened to kill him, if he ever came home..."

Lydia chirped a soft sob, and then shrieked: "What the HELL are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that you-YOU are to blame for this!" Sherlock hissed, pointing a finger at the woman. "And you know it too, don't you?...Had you been faithful to Donald...or maybe to at least ONE of your myriad lovers...you _whore_...then you would have been able to distinguish between the man you married ,and his twin brother...a long time ago..."

John felt like he swallowed his heart, which had just jumped into his throat...

"Sherlock, SPEAK ENGLISH!" he cried.

Sherlock laughed again, coming and leaning dangerously close to the Colonel.

"I would be a poor detective, if I didn't research the lives of everyone that is close to me...For their own protection...as well as mine...

Of course, I knew all about John's family. I "researched" you all,... that part of the last conversation we had before my Death, John,was not a lie. Save that my manner of research is not the same as that you lot employ. I did so..before...long before, in the beginning of our friendship, when we were just boys in school. Asked you the right questions...made deductions in the appropriate fields to create a "data base",about you, about your contacts, to judge the status of my new friend, whether the friendship was one that I could trust my Work to, and whether that companion was secure in his own right. At the time, the data was sufficient,but not so now...I merely passed off your actions, Solomon, for the ravings of a mad-man. My mistake...I do make them, on rare occasion...

At a pub one night, after one of our earlier cases for practice, I made an attempt at conversation with John, and it is unlikely that he remembers now that I got the whole story of "Solomon's" death from him. Supposedly, he had bought an American sport's car, custom made for the steering wheel to be on the UK appropriate side. And one night it malfunctioned when he was driving back from Manchester, Donald's current residence. But there were always holes in the story...First off, they never knew what exactly went wrong with the car. There wasn't a body; he was supposedly consumed in the flames of the aftermath...

After 27 years, I finally know the answer. And it's absurdly obvious, written all over you, even now.

First off, you are wearing a uniform that is military issue; if it was truly meant to be yours, it would fit. Yours doesn't, and washing machines, to my knowledge don't GROW clothes, they usually SHRINK them.

Unless your clothes have grown 1.5 centimeters, then no, the uniform is not yours. It has never been let out,because it is obvious you have never been over weight, neither have you been underweight, your obsession with military fitness is what keeps you a standard size from year to year. So then, the uniform is not yours, but I can assume, that because you have been trying to pass yourself off as your twin for the last 27 years, that it _did_ belong to him, and that he had a 1.5 centimeters greater muscle mass than yours, and was roughly 0.5 centimeters taller than you are.

Then there's your key ring, with the suspicious key to a Ford Mustang , fitting the ignition switch of a model from circa 30 years ago. Now...why would _you_ have a key to your _brother's _car that supposedly exploded 27 years ago? Sentiment?...Mmm...people don't normally keep such a sentimental ornament in the mix with their other grease-smeared ,use worn old keys, eh? The key hasn't been polished, or cleaned in any form, for at least as long as it has been on your key ring, and I should think something with sentimental value...a relic of your deceased brother...would have some special attention shown to it? A very gently used key though, you don't have a similar model of your own, the key has none of the markings that would suggest it has been used , even only sparingly, for the last roughly 30 years...

So I conclude then that the car was _yours._That it went the other way around, you had been staying with Donald and Lydia recovering from your growing problem with alcoholism. That you had lended your own car that night, to your brother, so that he could leave the house to go and fetch something for John, who was very sick with the stomach flu at the time, if I recall his story correctly, and the illness coupled with the fact that he was only a 7 year old at the time, is fitting explanation for why he wouldn't remember the night his uncle died. Or correction, his _father. _Who,by the way, from data I pieced together from things John told me about his early childhood, absolutely _adored _his only son. Had a passion for life, and was clean of any form of substance abuse. Was able to excel in his military career,whilst you were dishonorably discharged because of your alcoholism. As a teenager, I remember, John had blamed your violent change of character and sudden abuse of alcohol on the death of his uncle...But that wasn't the reason, no, the whole thing..."

Suddenly, Sherlock was laughing darkly, almost unable to breathe. John's head was spiraling...happy and horrified all at once.

Because this meant that he _hadn't_ been disowned ,after all.

Because this meant that his Dad,was really the man that he remembered from his early childhood. That man that had the kindest smile that every touched a man's face, a lot like his own if he realized that about himself, and laughed giddily and often, and had a bushy golden mustache when he was on leave, and allowed to grow one, and was gentle ,and stern, and had a terrible temper he never showed his beloved little boy ,that had grown into a man he would be _very _proud of, and was very much like himself.

Horrified, sick with a new sorrow too,to learn that that man, his father, his REAL father...was dead. Had been murdered.

"The whole thing..was a vendetta of sorts..."Sherlock went on. "You wanted to prove that you had what it takes to be every bit the soldier that your brother was. And so, you came up with an excuse to get him out of the house. You gave his little son a high dose of ipecac and passed his constant vomiting off as the stomach flu, that inspired the compassionate father to drive to the nearest pharmacy late at night, to get his little child something that would ease his mortal discomfort. He left the little boy with you, and his older half-sister (that is actually your daughter with Lydia, having been conceived when you tricked her into thinking she was with her husband,because she was always too drunk and too unfaithful to him to realize when he was _actually _on leave, or when it was actually you getting back at your brother behind his back in any way that could satisfy you, having his wife for your self being one of those ways, (I deduced this from Harriet's slightly more greenish eyes, the exact hue of yours). And also supposedly with his wife, who was _supposedly _ asleep upstairs, feeling poorly but there to be called upon if you couldn't handle the boy's pressing need,seeing as his father didn't trust you,and would never have left his beloved and very sick child with you,if it wasn't absolutely imperative, being that you were always too wasted to drive anywhere, anyway. But the wife had climbed down the lattice of her window, sneaking off to the bed of one of her most recent to that date lovers, and so she also had no reason to be suspcious of the night her husband died..."

Lydia blanched. John couldn't look at her. Couldn't believe what Sherlock was saying...

"Before you had poisoned the boy, you had gone into the garage, and tampered with the breaks of your prized sports car...anything to rid the world of your brother, and perform the ultimate deception.

He got half-way to the pharmacy,before the accident occurred. You pretended to be going out to the porch to have another swig of the rum you always kept in the pocket of your coat, and left John's sister to attend to him. But you followed him on his motorcycle, (having fixed the supposedly broken head-light on it), instead...and watched as he crashed into a huge oak that you knew would be on the way to the pharmacy, that would be positioned near a sharp detour for road work curve, that if one didn't break at, they would indeed careen off the road and straight into said tree. Your brother was killed instantly. The car was merely smashed...but you had to guarantee there would be no evidence left to disclose your deception.

So you switched clothes with the bloodied corpse. It would look ,then, like you had harmed yourself trying to rescue your brother from a damaged vehicle-that would convince people you were Donald, that being exactly like something he would have done. You would deny medical attention, so none of the paramedics could see that the blood wasn't actually yours. And then...you..."

Sherlock turned and looked sympathetically at John, who was crying now.

"You took that bottle of rum you were always caring with you...and you poured it..."

"NO!" Lydia hissed, covering her mouth...

"All over the body..."

The Colonel smiled ,sickly.

"You lit up a cigarette, and stuck it in your brother's cold dead lips..."

John's jaw dropped...

"And then...you tampered just a tiny bit with the gas tank, making sure that the whole thing would burst into flames...There wasn't a body; there wasn't even a bloody car! There was no evidence for any of the detective inspectors of New Scotland Yard to come up with even the faintest inkling that foul play was involved. Just a freak accident, and a grieving brother going off the deep for sadness at the passing of his twin. There was a funeral. The name "Solomon Watson" was carved on the stone. You had the career of the Colonel, the beautiful ,sometimes available wife, the white-picket fence home in Manchester, for a while, your own daughter, and the son of the man that you murdered. A son that looked and acted just like a boy version of that man...You could sense the spark of his father's spirit alive in him still, still crying out for justice from the ground...waiting . And some 12 years later...justice found him...You might have been able to hide from New Scotland Yard...but you knew...all along, you would never be able to hide from me..."

There was silence. John was clutching his stomach, to keep from being sick.

"Baby...I'm so so so very sorry..." his mother whimpered...

" A little too late for that now, Mum..."John gasped...closing his eyes.

Solomon began to applaud.

"Bravo,Sherlock Holmes! Yes, I knew I couldn't run from you forever...England's dear little bloodhound was already infamous in certain circles even when John was a little boy, about 12; I'm thinking that would have made you about 8 or 9, started young didn't you? I knew I wouldn't be able to run from you forever, and so that's why I'm going to have to kill you. Both of you. See, it's like this. It is ritual,the Lady here has determined that to appease my brother's blood, I must sacrifice his son, send him to the Underworld, to ease his sorrow. Disposing of you ,guarantees a clean slate for me, my brother's murder, my current rum-running enterprise...Utterly secure...

The way I'm going to do this ,is going to be fun, and beneficial to the government as well...You'll see."

And with that,two members of the crew came and hauled Sherlock and John away.


	15. Chapter 15 Down To The Water

** Chapter 15: Down to The Water~**

Mycroft stood in the morning sun, on the reef, surveying the abject poverty and paradise all at once that was this lonesome place in the Caribbean.

The blue of the water was a reflection of his memory. No sentiment, ...no remorse. His soul was like cold glass, and before his eyes endless visions were leaping up like sprites from the water.

Of a boy named Sherlock Holmes that had eternally altered the universe. Had alerted him to the strange mystery that was his heart.

Had utterly broken his heart, with the last beat of his own.

Mycroft sees everything there in the water's reflection. Remembers the day that Sherlock was born, and hearing a wailing that sounded like a kitten,declaring that this great puzzle of a man child had come into the world. He was never meant to stay very long, of course... He recalls the reckless ambition, the brilliance, of the little scientist/pirate , of the child that climbed to the very top of the tree to fetch his elder brother an apple and prove,

_"Sir Isaac was too slow, brother dear! A scientist has to climb to reach what he aspires!"_

A boy of 11 had uttered such profound words. Mycroft is smiling now, as he sees the boy of 11 become a boy of 16. A chemistry teacher now, a man with a vision to become the greatest detective of all time.

He watches that boy of 11 with pride,partially because he was his teacher, as he climbs through the chronicles of Mycroft's soul, and proves that indeed a man of science must climb to reach his visions.

But just as Sir Isaac discovered gravity, so too did Sherlock. Oh dear Icarus...What goes up, must come down.

Those who rise must also Fall...

John. The young doctor had been the absolute greatest blessing upon Sherlock's life, Mycroft knew it with every fiber of his conscious. Had also been his downfall.

What many of us don't know ,is that,on the day that he died, before Sherlock reached out to John , he reached out to Mycroft as well. That one long dark night that Molly Hooper sat vigil beside the great detective, on top of a lab table, and waited for the morning, like a prisoner waits for the dawn of the drums.

_He'd been expecting a call like this would come._

_"So, they've turned on you, then? The brilliant detective's not so brilliant after all, is he?" he answered._

_Sherlock drew a heavy breath._

_"Mycroft,...I think I have fully equated the price of my secrets..."_

_"Oh come, a few childhood memories, Sherlock? We bought Moriarty for rather cheap, wouldn't you say?"_

_"Well...I would...If I were in your place, brother dear. A few dull recollections of boyhood days, you know,... just a little gossip to feed the craze of a mad man..."_

_Right in that moment, in the tone of Sherlock's voice, Mycroft knew._

_He was one of few people who can say that he knows exactly the moment when his heart burst. He felt it, something very wrong, a spasm in the flesh of his heart. And he 'd need to be seen by a cardiologist later, but of course, he would never tell a soul. As the only soul he would ever tell personal things would soon be dead ...and gone. To Moriarty's hell, and all in the name of one witless angel, by the name of Doctor John Watson._

_"Except...that...the madman's hunger...has gotten out of hand...And now...you are calling me because...there's only one thing left to feed him...lest he devour the world." Mycroft said ,slowly._

_"Mycroft...I am going to die."_

_Mycroft recalled the silence, or almost utter silence, save for the sudden sob that escaped Molly, that he could hear over the receiver, and knew, but of course!, that she was with him in the end. For this he would be forever grateful..._

_"Don't be foolish..."_

_"Sorry. I'm not. Not this time. I have no choice...and you know it. In the end, we were always meant to destroy each other, he and I. It is my life, my soul, that will end his plague of hunger, or the fire we lit between ourselves will consume London and the world..."_

_"A little dramatic, Sherlock...Be realistic, please...Even madness can be chained...given the right set of locks and keys..."_

_Sherlock drew a steady breath._

_"Myc?"_

_The question, the use of the childhood nickname... This meant that Sherlock really needed his brother to listen to him...even if he didn't agree._

_"Sherlock..."Mycroft answered, in a patient tone, ready to listen...or to try. Never mind he couldn't bear what he was hearing. It was utterly absurd._

_"There is no chain so heavy as Death. For once, I am making a perfectly sensible choice, even you can see it. Today I will pay my debt to him...Today...we will call it a Night..."_

_In that moment, Mycroft asked the strangest of questions...a question that he would not have asked, if this were anyone other than his little brother. But curiosity always got the better of him, when it came to the most puzzling of creatures in his world._

_"And are you afraid?"_

_Sherlock swallowed, steadying himself._

_"Of only one thing..."_

_"And what's that, brother mine?"_

_"Will I be forgiven?"_

_"Well...you will have saved the world?"_

_"But I don't want to save the world!I want to save John...John needs to live. He doesn't deserve this...Never did anything but what was right. He's always been the better man, you and I both know it! He's probably the best man that ever walked the earth, would have to be, if he bothered with the likes of me. You taught me to be rational, and I thank you for that. But he taught me to be human. And how do I repay him?"_

_"Well...you are going...to die for him."_

_"That is not enough!"_

_"But I suppose, brother dear, that that will have to do..."_

_There was silence, and Sherlock drew a shaking breath..._

_"Mycroft...you have always had better judgement than me. I suppose since it's over now, I will have to admit to it. Tell me...please...if you know the answer..._

_Will I be forgiven?"_

_And for once, Mycroft Holmes didn't know the answer based on knowledge. For once...and the secret was his ,never to tell...(couldn't now could he? even if he wanted to...), for once, he based his reason on faith alone._

_"You most certainly will."_

_There was silence, and a breath of relief. The sun rose._

_It was time._

_"Thank you, Mycroft!...Thank you!...And goodbye."_

_"Goodbye...Sherlock."_

How many times had he been forced to say goodbye, to his beloved little brother, the only human being he was absolutely certain that he loved,enough to have traded places on the roof?

Too many times...

But not this time. There as he stood on the shores of Rochelais Reef, watching the ferry come sailing in , like a swan on the sapphire water,he swore on Sherlock's blood, all over the sidewalk under St. Bart's, his own blood therefore being the man was his closest kin, that this time, he would go down to the waters, and down to the Grave if he must, but Sherlock would live. By God, Sherlock was going to live.

"Reporting for duty,sir!" the Major cried, as he came wading to the shores of the reef, with Molly at his heels, the tour they had been on branching off, real people going about their real lives, and leaving them to their Armageddon world.

"We're alive...obviously...but...we might not have been...well..."Molly tried to say.

Mycroft smiled, and then drew a deep breath.

"So...what are our orders, sir?" Major gasped.

Mycroft let out a deep breath.

"Ah...yes...Good morning, Major. In the 5 minutes it took the both of you to wade to this part of the shore, I devised a devilishly clever plan ,indeed. We are going to need an old gown, a white wig, lady's rouge and powder, "

" Oh God no, sorry! I'm not flirting with any bloody pirates!I'll do a lot for you Holmes...but uhmmm...having my breasts critiqued by pirates...is where I..." Molly said, and the two men turned to her...She was blushing.

Mycroft chuckled."Despite the fact that you are rather smallish, breasts and all, my brother has been particularly beastly to you ,hasn't he?, and made you self-conscious ,dear. No, I wasn't suggesting such a thing...I may be ruthless...but I shall never compromise a lady's integrity, yours least of all. Well, not a real lady any way. Major...do you have a particular aversion to cross-dressing? Particularly if it is a requirement on a mission?"

The Major blushed..."You want me to dress...like an old lady ,sir?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. But don't worry, I wouldn't compromise your integrity either. I merely need a diversion, a particularly annoying diversion. Such as an old woman that tries to peddle her junk to a group of sun-poisoned rum runners. Are you the man...or figuritvely the lady..for the job?"

The Major coughed, and blushed burgundy ,but saluted nonetheless.

"Sir,yes sir! I am not trained in the application of lady's rouge or stockings, but I shall do my very best, sir!"

"Don't worry, the more hideous you are, the better this shall work. As for you,Molly dear, I will need you for a simpler task. My look out. I trust someone that has worked in your line of work has a sufficient eye for subtlties...which is what I will need."

Molly attempted a salute, but did it lopsided, and smiled,

"Sir...yes...sir?,..well, I will do my best at whatever I am supposed to be doing ,sir!" she giggled softly, and then smoothed her sweater back in place, that had been rumpled when the Major had wrapped his coat over it, to keep her warm when she was still unconscious.

Mycroft smiled,

"Right. So,...we're off to Baskerville Island ,then?" he cried, as Anthea came roaring up in a speed boat to take them there.

"Why couldn't we have gotten a bloody speed boat, that would have been so much easier than that wretched Box!" the Major grumbled under his breath, but dutifully marched to board it.

Molly swallowed, suddenly giddy. Soon they would rescue Sherlock and John! And besides all of that, for once, she was having an adventure. It was a tiny bit fun, if she was to be honest with herself.


	16. Chapter 16 And Into the Dark

**Chapter 16: And Into the Dark~**

They were lead into the Mother's crumbling shanty, high on a hill over looking the rest of the palm tree overgrown island. They were each kicked in the seat of their pants, and fell to their faces.

Then the Mother entered through a backdoor, dark green eyes flashing vengefully. A Calypso accent purred into the room, and Sherlock looked painfully up, getting to his knees, as she addressed him directly.

"So tell me ,Sherlock? What will become of yar soul, bein' ya' are a machine? Wuddin cha like ta know?..." she purred with laughter, and John pulled himself up in turn, popping his neck.

"Please. Just, whatever you're going to do to us, get on with it."

Sherlock gave John a look that told the young doctor his friend was in a state of almost panic, trying to calculate a way to save him, once more. His only real concern in life, being his safety now.

It was touching, really. But if Sherlock thought he was going to leave him, no matter what sort of grand escape plan he schemed up for him, he was dreadfully mistaken.

The Mother opened a jar of green,quivering goo. Sherlock sneered.

"What is that? What remains of the Colonel's brains?"

" Tis none of yar bidniss! But I will tell ya dis..." she smiled, flashing devil's white teeth. She was absolutely ,wretchedly beautiful, and it made John's skin crawl. She laughed, knowing what sort of effect she had on him...

"That it be very powerful stuff, yah? That it makes d'jumbi very keen to come out an' play wid cha! Which is what I wanna see, yah?"

"Oh, please! REALLY?! A jar of quivering green jelly is supposedly going to attract evil spirits to us? The hallucinogens, the deliriants, or whatever it is that you've got mixed up in the pipes through out the island, THAT is what will torment us to our deaths! Not some fairytale rubbish like JUMBIS or...squished fireflies-whatever that is in the jar!" Sherlock growled.

John huffed a sigh,and reached, and clutched Sherlock's arm, trying to calm him down.

The Mother smiled,

"So eider ya figgered it out, or da old pirates told ya? Den dey rob I of my joy,in watching ya squirm under da fear o' d'jumbi!"she hissed ,angrily. "Which means I will be doin' murder wid dem soon too, will I? Ah yes, Madeline will, won't she?Mother will..."

Sherlock was suddenly laughing hysterically at her. Not from fear as one would expect. John swallowed.

"Oh, sorry, it's nothing..it's just...you really thought you would have me squirming in fear? Of evil spirits? What if...I am one?"

She smiled,"Indeed yah might be, don't yah? Really might...But Jonny here, I don't think so, naw...Jonny here is a good boy, aint ya son? Well, den it's the devil to pay wid one really bad boy, and one really good one. A black sheep, and a white sheep, and trouble ma' soul!"

She painted their faces in the green burning liquid. Immediately Sherlock began to identify it as " _some sort of anticholineric...to be absorbed directly through the skin?, like an anointing...So apparently she wants us in a prime physical state for confusion, probable side effects will include ataxia(already lost our coordination due to that infernal barrel voyage!) hyperthermia, dry mouth and skin, a hyper startle tendency, photophobia (sun's already too bright anyway, oh this shall be splendid!) and just general confusion! Oh this is just wonderful, right when I need clarity the most!"_

He felt the voice of his Teacher somewhere inside the mind palace...

"_ You don't need clarity, Sherlock, you just need truth..."_

He was left to ponder what that meant, as the Mother took a broom, and beat the both of them out of her door, and set them to rolling down the cliff, and landing in the grotto.

* * *

><p>"BEHOLD! DIS IS DA SACRIFICE DAT I MAKE TO DA SUN! AND THE SOULS OF HELL SHALL SHARPEN D'EIR TEETH AN DEM! AN DEM PEARL-WHITE BONES! HEAR DAT HOWLIN ,BOSS MAN?" The Mother shouted, as Sherlock and John rolled painfully down the sand ,and stone, and little tree littered hill.<p>

"HEAR DAT HOWLIN, OL' BOSS MAN! DAT DEM BLACK TIGERS DOWN IN DA FURNACE. DATS DEM HUNGRY BLACK TIGERS DOWN IN HELL , SOON BE FEASTIN! AND DEN YOU'LL BE FREE TA LIVIN' LAVISH, LIKE OLD PIRATES, AM I RIGHT BOYS!" The Mother shrieked a cackling laugh, and toasted the Colonel by opening a huge bottle of rum.

But Sherlock got up on his knees, and suddenly John saw Icarus in his face again.

"No...Colonel, I am afraid your medium is mistaken. That isn't the sound of tigers that you hear. That is the shrieking of my ribs, as I scrape them against the roots of the mountains, to polish my bones for one white sword of justice, I mean to make from them...And who will I use it on? Tigers?...Psshh..."

He got up. John laid his face in the sand, silently begging, not wanting to see this side of Sherlock again.

"Not tigers...Colonel...Not tigers , nor demons, nor the bars of my cage! No...I will sharpen it until you come down to the Pit...And then I will afflict you with it...very great affliction...Oh, you don't believe me? You will die, sooner than later, old as you are. When you come down...I'll be waiting...I can be patient when I have a reason..."

John swallowed the urge to be sick...Sherlock didn't belong in any Pit! He belonged in some sort of Paradise...And suddenly John realized that he was going to find this Teacher Sherlock met in the after life, if it was Hell to pay,and beg the bloke to take them somewhere...other than the Pit... To a better place...

John decided that today he was going to die for Sherlock Holmes. Which is why his head burned with sudden, silent rage when he heard the next part of Sherlock's conversation with his Uncle Sal.

"Oooooh...I am so frightened...Well, I do have the greater military experience, and I am older, so we shall see what sort of fight you can put up, young man, when I meet you in Hell."

"But you forget, that Hell is my haunt, and I have the advantage!" Sherlock cried, leaping to his feet. "And you assume that because your soul is black, you will be able to see in the Nothingness that is the Night, from whence I came! But down in the depths, where the Keres walk freely,and Akhlys is queen, that is a vacuum you cannot fathom! AND YOU WILL PRAY FOR THIS GARISH SUN, FOR BETTER ARE THE FLAMES OF HEAVEN, THAN TO FALL UNDER AKHLYS GAZE! AND COULD ICARUS RISE ON BLAZING WINGS AGAIN, HE WOULD ENDURE THE RAGE OF HELIOS LONG BEFORE HADES AMUSEMENT, I GUARANTEE!"

Sherlock began to pace madly about the grotto. Suddenly he reached down, and plucked up a leg bone, and a skull.

"Oh, and you ...you have enough blood on your hands to warrant a rather nice seat in the Eternal Night, I should think? Is this another of your murders?"

He suddenly cast the skull up in the air, and swatted it like a baseball straight for the Mother, and it hit her full in the face, and shattered the rum bottle, which cut her lip,and she shrieked and cut him a nasty look.

Colonel twisted his lip. "Your madness...is troubling...Yes, I am glad to rid the world of you today. I consider it a service to my country."

"Hmmm, what is more troubling, is how very greatly you underestimate me ,Colonel. No empty threats have I made today. Once I died, and returned to the land of the living via Lazarus syndrome... I have seen the Inferno literally,as well as the far darker Pit of James Moriarty,...In some circles...I am known ...as Icarus...King in Terror."

Suddenly the Colonel blanched.

"So...I see...Long live...the King..." he bowed elegantly..."The reigning heir of Moriarty might be a formidable opponent ,after all. And what have I got to lose, really, seeing as we are already damned?"

"Well, seeing as you have nothing to lose...you could make a bargain with me. Call it a deal with the Devil if you want...But when you come down to my level, then maybe we could be ...well...somewhat less than enemies..."Sherlock pratically purred...folding his hands, like he did when he was presented a very appealing case.

The Colonel swallowed, "Right...I see...you want to secure the lives of your innocents...Particulary the runt of the Watson litter!" he pointed to John.

"Ah, yes...you are clever, which pleases me...It might be less than dull doing business with you..."

"What are you proposing?"

"I sell you my worthless black roasted crisp of a soul. The torments you have concocted for the two of us, you double , you triple, or however many ways you wish, and you exact them on me. You let John walk...and we call this a Night."

"What makes you think I would let him walk so easily? You don't have a soul to torment, you machine! But he does..."

"Mmm...that's exactly why I think you'll let him walk...Let him live with it. But he will live...and that is all that matters to me!"

"NO, NO,and NO!" John suddenly protested, and leaped to his feet, coming between Sherlock and the Colonel.

"John..."Sherlock gasped, trying to get this situation back in his control.

"You have said enough!" John growled, and turned to his Uncle.

"You have taken every thing and every one that I have ever cared about away from me,...save for one! And by God, you won't be taking him from me! Whatever torment you have plotted for us...we will go through with it. You can double it, triple it, quadruple it, or whatever you like, and let me off the leash, but I'm coming straight back, after him! If I pull him out of your fire in pieces, I will get him off this bloody island, I SWEAR TO GOD! If I die trying, so be it. I'd rather die in his arms, than live to be a 100 in the knowledge that I let him take the Fall for me again. Not this time, absolutely not! Whatever bargains you make with him, you won't have made with me, and I won't have to stand by them, and it'll just be stupid to try and go ahead and make bargains then! So there."

At this moment, Lydia sees the error of her ways. She sees the phantom of the husband of her youth, alive in her nearly perfect man child, and she realizes that she doesn't deserve him. That if any one is being punished today, it will be her, for allowing this to happen. And so she races off towards the sea, where unbeknownst to her Mycroft's rag-tag Calvary is coming ,shortly.

Colonel laughs. "Well...I suppose that's it was worth a try really, Sherlock. I guess all your torment , your death...in the end I suppose it's all for nought, though, isn't it? Lost your soul for nothing...Well even so...long live the King...And I'll ask for you personally, when I arrive on the shores of Hades..."

With that the Colonel, and the Mother withdrew to the Colonel's private veranda, to abandon the young men to their torment and death.

Slowly, almost afraid to see what his reaction was, John turned to face Sherlock.

He had expected him to be furious. He was surprised to find that he had burst into tears. Was weeping more openly than John had ever seen him do.

"Hey..." he gasped, and reached out his hands to catch Sherlock by the shoulders, as he stumbled.

"I told you...I told you so...didn't I? Why the HELL didn't you listen to me?...You could have walked away...you could have been spared...

I tried to save you...and I failed. And now all of it, the Work...dismantiling Moriarty...all of it is absolutely MEANINGLESS...because I failed you...my only friend. For God's sakes! Why didn't you listen?!"

"No, it's not." John gasped, suddenly bursting into tears himself..."No, Sherlock...You have saved me. You did more than save my life. You saved my soul. I know the truth now...that that man...was not my father. You have no idea..what it all means...Your Work...and letting a clueless fool like me be part of it! ...And you...you _died..._for me...Sherlock...you were tortured incessantly in Moriarty's hell, so that I wouldn't have to be...You have no idea...what kind of evil you have already saved me...from...And now...Now it's my turn to die for you...We go through his maze; we play his little game. If we survive it, it'll be because we worked together. If we don't survive it, together is the only way for you and I to go!...And who said you have to go down to Hades anyway?..Nope, not gonna happen. I'm gonna find this guy-this Teacher of yours, and get him to show us the way to some place better. And I'm taking you with me! You gave me a home,and a family, and a life that I never could have had without you...Don't I get to say thanks for it? Isn't it my turn to return the favor...somehow?"

Sherlock gasped back a sob, utterly humiliated...

"I'm supposed to protect you...it's what friends do...you said!-"

"I know! I know, but see friends carry each others burdens too! Hey, look at me...mate, it's ok..."

Sherlock looked up at the sky,twisting his lips, blinking, trying to get his bearings, ashamed of the long pent up tears, of frustration, of regret, of self-loathing.

John took his face in his hands, and made him look him in the eyes...

"We are more than friends now. We are family. Brothers, you and me. The only family I have.I consider it an honor...this..." Sherlock swallowed a sob, and John pressed their foreheads together...

"You didn't fail me. I chose this. I chose you."

"Chose...me...why?"

"Sherlock..isn't it obvious? Come on, mate...you're too brilliant to be such an idiot!...I love you! Yeah, might seem crazy to you...but I do. You haven't failed me, you haven't failed anybody! I chose you, and I did it gladly!...So...just..."

Sherlock was shaking his head, and had doubled over...

"Don't...just don't..."John whispered, and took him in his arms, and let him cry now...like he never had allowed himself to before. Now there were no people left to talk about the great stoic Sherlock Holmes reduced to tears...

After a while,though, the drugs dried his tears for him, and he stood up straight, mouth gaping at John. This leading John to his apparent death-would be the hardest thing he'd ever had to do period.

John laughed softly, "Lead the way..." he whispered.

Sherlock reached out, and grabbed his hand,closing it in his fist. John thumbed his tears away.

"It's ok,mate...Just...lead the way."

Swallowing then,putting back on his expression of steel, he nodded, and muttered, "Ok...but...I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"I hoped not...Lead the way..."

And with that John followed Sherlock into the dark.


	17. Chapter 17 The Calvary Comes

**Chapter 17: The Calvary Comes~**

The Major sat at the vanity that Anthea had set up within her private "office" tent. A team of Secret Service agents had set up an encampment on a small island within a 3 kilometer radius of the island they believed the genetic testing site also known as "Baskerville Island" was located . Currently Mycroft and Molly were standing outside, being filled in on all the information the agents had gathered when trying to locate the boys.

Major smiled in the mirror as he bombarded his face with lady's powder ,like London in the Blitzkrieg. Rather thought he looked quite like his mother, now that he was wearing a fuzzy permed white wig, too much face make up, and now he was scrawling on rouge like a little kid scribbles in a coloring book.

Inspiration struck him from somewhere unknown, and he began singing to his reflection, to the tune of Tom Jones' "She's a Lady" only he had changed the words:

"I,m a lady, whoa ohohohohoh, Now I'm a lady, whoa ohohohohoho , I'm a lady, yeahahahahaha, and the lady is meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!..."

To complete his little number, he held the curling iron up like a microphone, and accidentally singed a dark brown spot at the end of his nose, thankfully not burning his skin, or not feeling the burn through the knee-deep concealer that he was wearing. The burning smell brought him back to reality, and he snuffed the flame on the end of his nose with an old hanky, and looked up in the mirror, to see Mycroft standing in the doorway, twirling his umbrella in his hands, and in the grass that made up the tent's floor.

"Whenever you are finished celebrating your ladyship...we have a rescue mission to enact." he said, rather coldly (can the Iceman speak otherwise?) and turned, with a roll of his eyes, and walked through the tent flap.

The Major turned back and looked at his reflection, and smiled charmingly,

"He's only so sore because I'm drop dead gorgeous like this! The pirates won't know what they're about when I've finished with them...seducing them to come near to my smashing ,boulder sized breasts, and then pummeling them with my man-sized fists! And I must say, while Sherlock would say this shade was rather alarming,and John would want to make a "study" out of it, I look rather ravishing in hot pink, and should wear old lady's nightgowns in this shade just to get off on it,and scare the daylights out of their clients,out of habit even! Oh, dear Lord, this is actually a lot of fun! The boys should be captured more often!"

With that he grabbed up his cane, blew a kiss at the mirror, fluffed his fake breasts, and bounded out the door.

He ran right into Molly ,who was being instructed in how to use her new military grade binoculars.

"Oh, uhm...yes...sorry, could you please not stick my face in your breasts...I mean-Sorry! They aren't _actually_ your breasts...or any one's breasts!...as they are..., in fact, made of stuffing. It's only... well I can't really breathe...you see..."

"Oh good Lord, Molly ,dear, I couldn't even see you down there, yes, yes, of course, come out from there at once!" And with that the Major plucked Molly out of his huge fake cleavage, like one would a little doll.

Molly sputtered, and blinked, and took in the Major, "You look rather like my Grand mum...Oh, I mean, not that she was...mannish!...And-and well you are a rather attractive woman-well not,...I mean you are a rather handsome man, but I'm not _attracted..._and oh, uhmm..."Molly put a hand in her fake breast ruffled hair, mortally embarrassed, and Mycroft said from somewhere behind:

" And whenever you both are finished exchanging numbers, or Grand mum cherry pie and biscuit recipes, we may actually want to get a move on, if we do actually intend to find my brother and Doctor Watson, alive and in one piece..."

"Yes, right...wouldn't do to find them in multiple pieces, we don't even have any plastic bags, or sterilizing chemicals...or..." Molly's eyes grew wide, realizing who she was talking about.

"We had better hurry!"

"Yes, of course!" Mycroft gasped, smiling falsely at the incompetence of his rescue crew. He immediately placed himself over everyone as the superior intellect of this operation:

"Now, listen very carefully, all of you. Anthea, be a dear, would you?, and set up my slide projector."

Anthea brought out a slide projector, and cast a tarp over a clothesline to make a shadow on a palm tree behind them, so it could work.

"Now, as you lot know, the island which we are being sent to was a weapons testing ground of the UK, off the record, disguised as a tourist attraction, in the 1960's. It's actually the sister site of Baskerville in England, hence the nickname "Baskerville " island. But while Baskerville is more a drugs and three-eyed monkeys operation, the island is far more horrific in nature. The study here was not merely to discover weaponizably ,genetically altered animals, or chemical deterrents for times of war...it was a study in the breaking of the miscreant. A study in how to turn the mind against itself, a study in the darkest form of torture that exists, a place in the human psyche that no whip lash could ever reach, and no amount of beating, cutting, electrocuting, partial impalation, or any form of extreme pain could ever reach. The original name of the island to which we go, ladies, somewhat-lady, and gentlemen, is the "Devil's Circus". Here...the demons come out to play...here the darkest nightmares aren't just dreams...aren't even only hallucinations, they are the delirient poisoned psyche turning against itself. But take heart...if any body could survive such an epidemic of induced psychosis, it would be the clever and sagacious young Sherlock Holmes, and his dear Doctor Watson."

Molly smiled, her spirits lifting. Of course Sherlock and John would be able to face whatever hell they were about to encounter! Of course they were going to make it out!"

Mycroft had Anthea begin to flick the projector..." We cannot merely sneak onto the island for these reasons. The entry into the the test site is at the bottom of a hill, through an open faced grotto, that dumps one right out into the center of the test grounds. There in the jungle, a carnival was set up, and camouflaged in the trees. It would be absolutely impossible for us to reach by helicopter because of the mock roller coaster and ferris wheel erected in the only clearings that actually do exist on the island. We cannot enter by boat, for the reason that a great electric wire and metal spike gate system, broken down now, has been erected on the only covert and safe docking places on the islands other side. To enter by the safe side would be to walk right into the nest of pirates, and our little speed boat isn't adequately equipped for classic Hollywood cannonade. The only way to enter then, is by a diversion, and to swim ashore from a safe distance to idle our boat. Once on shore, we will sneak behind the Colonel's private island mansion, and claim the veranda as our own territory , and we will hold him for a bargaining chip with the pirates. We will extract whatever information we need about the island from him there and then, such as the all important problem of disabling the pipes that contain the mist-induced hallucinogens, as well as very clear maps of the "Devil's Carnival" so that we will know what traps to avoid. If our boys are alive, then we will alert them some how to our presence, and guide them back the way they went in, right through the mouth of the grotto again. Am I clearly understood?"

"Sir yes sir. Clear as wine glasses ,sir. In fact, I have only one question..." the Major said with a salute.

"And what is that, Major?" Mycroft asked, preparing for a legitimate inquiry into how his genius plan would be carried out. But ,alas, poor Mycroft, it was Sherlock's intellect that was celebrated most. All the Major could say was:

"Does this dress make my bum look rather large? Be honest, love."

He turned around, for Molly to see the back side of the loose fitting hot pink granny gown.

Molly's mouth opened and closed, unsure how to answer.

"We haven't any time for this!" Mycroft hissed, thunder stolen. "Now pass the firearms about, Anthea, dear, and for Molly a taser. I don't want to be looking for the boys in the dark, these wretched mosquitos!"

Anthea loaded an AK-47 for herself, and a large pistol for the Major's stockings.

"Personally I think you will need more than a taser." Anthea muttered, handing Molly a saber and showing her how to belt it to her waist.

"Yeah , I know, a bit old fashioned. You can cut through the trees with it ,if nothing else..."

And with that the rag tag team of Mycroft, Anthea, Mrs. Major, Molly, and 3 other SIS agents crowded onto the tiny speed boat,and set out across the water, the Calvary coming for Sherlock and John, though they hadn't even the faintest idea that they were.


	18. Chapter 18 Heaven To Hell

**Chapter 18 : Heaven to Hell~**

The sun was their enemy as photophobia set in. Sherlock's head throbbed, like somebody had a power drill in his ear. The screams of the tropical birds didn't help. He felt like there was a gypsies hurdy gurdy winding and unwinding its dark music in his stomach ,filling him with dread, and desperation.

There had to be some way to get John out of here alive, even if he didn't make it. If only his head were clearer. Bloody senses! Why did he always need to depend on them?

"_You don't need clarity, you just need truth..." _he heard the Teacher say in the palace of his mind...and once again he wondered what in blazes that meant!

John trudged behind him, chattering incessantly because he was already slightly delirious. Sherlock supposed the only good that had come from his forced drug addiction days was that he was less susceptible to forced drug abuse now. John wasn't so fortunate.

"This is just like being back in Afghanistan...you know? You were there...too...were a detective for SIS back then...under cover as a New Scotland Yard tipster...they didn't think I'd ever remember...but I do now, mate...I do now...It's just...why does it have to be so bright?" he squinted up through the trees. Stumbled, and fell hard against Sherlock's shoulders, realizing where he was, and leaning against him then, not wanting to move.

Sherlock stood deer-by-water still, looking and listening.

"Haven't seen the hell-hounds yet...have you? How could you see anything ?...really this BLOODY sun...It's too bright..." John grumbled, burying his face in Sherlock's blazer, closing his eyes against the light.

"No, no hounds, John...Never really was a monster though, don't you remember?...I don't think...that this is really going to be like that though...I don't think this is a trick...I think it's a game, more or less..."

John pressed a hand on his shoulder, as if trying to make sure he was still there..."Oh, yeah?...What makes you ...think that?"

_I've got to get you water..._Sherlock thought. _Clean water, more worried about chemicals even than I am ocean salt and contamination...God help me...Isn't that what Gavin always says? Oh God, this SUN!"_

He turned around, and caught John who nearly fell to his knees by the sudden motion. Drew him up by his arms, like one would a doll, and then slipped his arms around his waist,trying to support his shaking knees.

"More important than figuring out what's really going on here, is finding something clean to drink..."

"There's probably a whole stache of rum around here?..."

"Water, John. You need water. I need to think...You've got to help me find water..."

The soldier would be better skilled in wilderness survival than a detective,Sherlock thought. On his hiatus, he usually only fled through woods, and sometimes Moriarty's men would burn them down to get to him. He never really got the chance for an over night stay...

"That's...easy...there's a stream right over there."John pointed, and Sherlock looked. Sure enough there actually was a stream.

"It's ...not a natural stream. It's man-made, see?, dug down a trench, chemically treated even, I can smell it in the air! They...they are supplying us with clean water?...They don't want us to die right off...or waste time on boring things such as...looking for water..."

"We sure it's safe to drink? Here, I'll try it first!"

"No!" Sherlock pressed his hand in John's chest. "Said something about..."we go together"...remember that? We'll try it simultaneously, or we will both agree not to drink it." Sherlock nodded fiercely, deciding that ideal should work both ways.

John nodded..."I get it. Come on then...Hope it doesn't taste as bad as it looks...it's a weird bright green...see?"

"No, John...no it isn't...You have been drugged..."

"So were you...same green jelly stuff...How come I'm the only one tripping...?"

Sherlock sighed, "Do I have to spell it out?"

John blinked ,dumbly.

"I'm not proud of it, but my life as a junkie has made me a little more immune to this sort of thing..."

John's eyes lit up..."Oh...yeah...Well I'm glad you stopped...This is horrible."

Sherlock frowned, and helped John down to the water. They both drank, John thrusting his head in the stream, Sherlock drinking with his hands forming cups.

"Am I growing heads and a tail?" John asked, wearily pulling his head up. Sherlock smiled.

"_Probably should feed him too...but what? I'm RUBBISH at taking care of people!" _he growled inside himself.

John just licked his lips, and curled a brow,thoughtfully.

"What did you mean?"

"Hmm?"

"A minute ago, when you said that about, ' more of a game than a trick'?"

Sherlock looked straight in John's eyes. Knew that nothing he said now could daunt the young soldier's spirit.

"All we have to do is pass through a shallow cave, and immediately we're in a forest clearing, and there's clean water to drink, streaming down a man-made brook? What I'm saying is...this isn't just a trick, where they play with our heads a little bit to keep us quiet like they did Henry...This is a test...A game...Our execution itself is a case we have to solve...They've rigged the sacrifice to make it the most degrading experience that we can endure and that they can witness. Dehumanize us, and leave us to burn in the eyes of their gods...whoever they call gods...Think she said something about that wretched thing..."Sherlock pointed to the sun.

John thought for a moment, and nodded..."If we are delirious...and not really hallucinating...then we've got a serious disadvantage in solving their riddle...Which is why they used a anticholineric, or something...and not a psychedelic..." his voice trailed off. Sherlock smiled...glad that his clever doctor was with him, but also wishing he wasn't here because he was in danger.

"Right, you know your material...don't you, Doctor Watson? I guessed it was an anticholineric a while ago...I think they want us in a weakened and delirious physical state for whatever mental barrage is about to occur. It's not gonna be like seeing a hound that is actually a dog, but the opposite rather. It's probably going to be an actual maze that looks like a safe and promising road out of the jungle. This is worse than make-believe. This is turning Heaven to Hell."

John thought about this..."Reverse psychology? Yeah, ok...Ummm...how did you...put all of that together...if you don't mind me asking?"

"First it was the choice of drug...then it was this stream, and the fact that there are no signs of the hallucinogenic misters right away. And...well...it's become an instinct...Really...I didn't tell you the whole story of my Hiatus. There...were things I didn't remember so clearly...thought they were half-starved nightmares...I wasn't going to tell you about silly things like when I was half-starved, or cold, or dying of thirst...and having loads of nightmares...They proved to be real though...and they proved to be...more along these lines."

John was stunned. Wondering...how much of the supposed full story was actually missing. Feeling his stomach constrict at the thought of Sherlock half-starved and cold, and lying on the street somewhere conflicted with nightmares...Cursing the fact that he was _here, _and if he stayed _here_ for many more days...he would be in that state again...and worse, for certain.

"And then there just happens to be a wrought iron carnival in the middle of a jungle...That I'm fairly certain I am actually seeing..."Sherlock pointed, and John looked up

"I..I see it too, so either we're both going batty, or it's really there...What do you suppose it's there for?"

Sherlock grinned, taking the torment like he did one of his puzzles, loving his sport till the end.

"I think it's there for me to find the truth...Heaven or Hell?"


	19. Chapter 19 Mercy Is Here

**Chapter 19: Mercy Is Here~**

Molly held her breath for a moment, standing in the jungle. The events of this morning buzzed through her head, and in her stomach, like a swarm of bees on their way to war. So much can happen in a single hour ,when one is having an adventure...

_The Major cried out in a crackling, more crow than maiden voice:_

_"Pirates? Oh, pirates? Wherefore art thou, Pirates? It is I, Juliet, the traveling diva, come to put on a show for you!" _

_With a flourish, the Major began to shake his gigantic fake breasts from side to side, and bounce them like one might a basketball, singing a very old Connie Francis song that he had changed the words to:_

_"WHERE THE BOYS ARE...THAT'S WHAT I WANNA KNOW!..._

_TILL I'VE GOT THEM, TILL I'VE GOT THEM-WON'T BE WAITING PATIENTLY!"_

_The Pirates had come out of the woodwork, with looks of utter horror on their twisted faces._

_"Madam..." the Captain began, clearing his throat, "There was no request for a belly gram on this island...perhaps you have the wrong one?"_

_The Major was now popping squats, and the fake breasts were jirating around at unnatural angles. Mycroft took the opportunity to sneak everybody on shore whilst the pirates stood transfixed by breasts made of stuffing. One of them choked on a fly._

_"No...I've most certainly got the right bunch of pirates,darling!..Which is why I'm here...I heard all about your little rum running business, and I wanted to see if I could dance for a free bottle of shine!_

_He drew a gigantic breath, and started singing at the top of his lungs to the tune of Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" :_

_"SOMEWHERE ON THIS ISLAND...MY BOYS ARE._

_BECAUSE YOU STUPID PIRATES TOOK THEM AWAY, SO FAR..._

_WHERE TROUBLES SEEM TO NEVER STOP, _

_AND IQ LEVELS SEEM TO DROP,_

_THAT'S WHERE I'LL FIND THEM!"_

_It took the pirates all of 15 minutes to realize what Major was on about. And in 15 minutes, Mycroft and his agents were escorted to the Colonel's private island mansion, by none other than Lydia Watson,who had run to the sea-shore in despair, for how she had failed her only son, and who told Mycroft the whole story,as Sherlock had solved it._

All of which left Molly Hooper ,by order of Mycroft, equipped with binoculars in one hand, and Anthea's saber in another, on look out, prowling through a remote Caribbean jungle in search of Sherlock Holmes.

It was like Sherlock's childhood dreams come to life in a way that was fragmented ,and darkened, and twisted, by the stained glass - shard ashes, of his utterly broken life.

How did she ,of all people ,come to be here now ,of all times? For this was the day of all days that he needed her most.

It didn't matter how. She was mercy to him; she had always been. He'd always struggled to make the machine obey the man inside it, and she had always been there, to call out that man from that dark and steel-cocooned place.

She was mercy to him, and she was here now, calling his name over the shrieks of monkeys, and the cries of birds...as something in the jungle stirred like a stomach in the throes of naseua..just not right...

"They'll never get out of the Carnival...It's made like that, you know? Once you go through it's gates, yer not coming out again!" said a voice, in a very thick accent like someone from Liverpool might have.

Molly spun around, brandishing the saber, eyes gone wide,jaw clenched tight.

She may be mercy to _Sherlock, _but not to anybody else! Would go so far as to climb into a box ,veins full of a sleep from which she might not ever wake, to bring him home again. She was prepared to fight to the death, and fight the Reaper off too, tooth and nail, to get to him now, after all that. Held her breath, half ready for the battle with whoever this random bloke was, and half from wanting to lay eyes on Sherlock and John, make certain ,with her own eyes, that they were alive and well.

"Easy, dolly, I won't do nuffin to ya...Can't hardly move no more,you know?" said an old man, that started roiling with laughter at the little "doll" with the oversized saber in tow, that had walked into his jungle nest.

"What do you mean...by ...they'll never get out?" Molly asked, swallowing. "Well, I mean, it's rather obvious that they don't want them to...they ARE trying to kill them ,after all, but you're saying that there's a reason why they can't...aren't you?"

The old man stood up,"You know most frightened little girls would have screamed, and then begged me not to take any advantages of them...Which I aint gonna do, but that's what you'd half expect from a crazed old jungly man, aye?...You don't look nervous..."

"I'm not a _little _girl! Well, I mean, I am _little..._and a _girl..._a woman. But not..not a ...oh well...never mind, it's not important! What is important is that my very best friend since I WAS a "little girl" is trapped here with his,practically, brother...and you seem to know that already... and maybe you can help me...so I...I won't kill you..."

"You...kill...Old Ben? BAHAHAHAHA."

Molly bit her lip. Nothing made her more cross than not being taken seriously.

And the next thing "Old Ben" knew was that his make shift belt had been cut off,and his pants fell down to his knees, revealing underwear made by triple wrapping the Union Jack around his waist, a large knot roosting on top of his rather flabby butt-cheeks like a tale.

"You...didn't..."

"Unless you want to walk bare bummed the rest of the way..which would be...bad... with all these bugs...that and I don't want to see your..-oh! uhmmm...YOU HAD BEST TELL ME WHERE SHERLOCK AND JOHN ARE, AND WHY THEY CAN'T GET OUT!"

The old man cringed as the saber waved dangerously close to his hastey made underpants.

"ALRIGHT!...They're up there...in the center of the jungle...past the man-made chemically treated springs, in the place called the Carnival. It's really a series of dangerous mine-field mazes, but the mines aren't bombs. They are electric touch-tiles if you will...And there isn't any way out of there...well...unless you were able to rig the whole puzzle itself into blowing its own fuses to kingdom come...I oughta know, I designed it...helped to anyway."

Molly swallowed..."So...the only way for them...to get out...could kill them?"

"Clever aren't you ,ducky!"

Molly growled, "Listen to me! It might not seem like such a threat now...but if any harm comes to either of my boys, I will cut off your underpants in the largest patch of poison ivy...or whatever sort of thing is like it ...in a, guess this is a, jungle...and your...your...uhmm...that...you'll have so many poison ivy bumps... there...I'll have to get you a catheter just so you can even pee. Do you understand me?!"

The old man gulped, a ball moving in his throat visibly...

"What do you want me to do? They are already in the bloody trap!"

"If ANYBODY can get out of it it would be Sherlock Holmes!...What I want you to do is to...well...show me how I can ...I don't know..help. He never really needs me to be clever. He just needs _me_.Now more than ever, and by God, he will have me!...well what I mean is...I will be there for him...whatever it takes. Even if that means having to see your naked bum, a bit bloody when I swipe my sword across it..."

The old man's eyes grew wide.

"Very well...I will take you to your friends. Or whatever's left of them,by the time we get there."

Old Ben began to lead the way, Molly swiping grass, (and occasionally the grass directly behind said bum for emphasis) down in their wake.

Her heart was beating so hard it made her head hurt. She could only form one coherent thought:

Get to Sherlock. Just. get. him. back.


	20. Chapter 20 In the End

**Chapter 20: In the End~**

The Carnival rose about them like glaciers made of iron, wrapped in electric wires that shivered and burned like the veins of machines,with a smell like battery acid, and a taste in the air like blood,and the ashes of trees that fell ,like soldiers in battle, lay like snow fall all about them. They were up to their knees in the ashes.

Sherlock stood like a statue at the threshold of the Devil's door, face as cold as the stone his heart had turned to.

The Carnival wheel creaked in the wind, calling them to come and die.

Slowly, Sherlock turned. They had been over this silently time and time again, ever since they walked into the Carnival 3 hours ago.

But they both knew, deep in their bones.

"There's...only one way out of here..."Sherlock said, in a robotic tone.

It was clearly obvious, even to John.

The Carnival consisted of a single wheel of iron, wrapped in electric wire that was deadly exposed, hissing like vipers whenever the wind blew debris against it. Around it ,was a series of carousels, with dark horses wrought in iron, the skeletons of past inmates of the island mounted on them, faces turned and gaping to the sky, white bone fingers pointing back towards the one wheel, wrapped themselves in thousands upon thousands of live wires that crisscrossed in a spider's path back to that one wheel.

They all turned together, and groaned like the gates of Hell, generating electric currents, and strange whining children's music, from music boxes built into the bottom of each carousel,always back to that one wheel. A thousand, thousand ,thousand webs of electricity, death at every step, a maze that no one could enter, and no one could leave.

Unless.

The Wheel itself had a great power breaker box in the center of it. If one could find a safe path through the convoluted webs of electric death ,they maybe could climb up the face of the wheel, and then they could turn down the kill switch. The Carnival of Death would sleep at last.

The only means of survival promised almost certain death, unless a miracle changed the course of that always circling maze, like vultures in the music, that never ceased to whine and hiss the tune of "Itsy Bitsy Spider".

John smiled.

"I know. It's obvious, even to me. It's all fine..."

Sherlock drew a heavy breath, his hair was standing on end from the static electricity he was closer to. His eyes were dancing like flames, tormented more so by the mocking music than anything else.

"This is probably the end."

"I know."

Sherlock huffed again, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his blazer, having removed his long dark coat before he went to bed the night they were taken. He swallowed, weighing his last words carefully.

Wanting to do this better this time.

"I...have...one more thing...I need to ask of you. I've asked you...for so many favors!, and it wasn't fair, but...I greatly appreciated it all. I really did. You may not have been the brightest of men,an average mind, and all that, but you...as a conductor of light...you were...phenomenal."

John smiled. He was trying so hard, badly fumbling his last confession. But he tried. Had tried to do right by John, had tried to save him. Heaven knows he tried...

"I failed you...All my life, I was trying to protect you. To preserve that perfect conductor of the only light that was in my world. My world...was very dark. Thank you. Only God knows...how very much you truly did deserve to be saved. But in the end I could not do it." he frowns, with regret, and takes a deep, even breath, with a slight, sad smile.

"I have done...terrible things. You have no idea how terribly black the stain is on my hands, both from fire and from blood, when I was trying to stop Moriarty. My Work was not so much a charity to the world ,as it was a sword to the soul of Mother Earth, as I tried to end every insurrection on her face. I don't know how it will be remembered, or even if it matters now. But I dedicate every bit of it... to you. Because...I was trying to save you. You are my legacy. You are."

John laughed, deeply flattered, and Sherlock nodded, as if deciding that all his Work was done now.

" I have committed many sins...and for the full sum of them...I cannot be forgiven now. St. Peter will not open his gates to me. But I hope, I ..well...pray...that's what people do,isn't it? They pray...

Well this is my first, and my last prayer. That...St. Peter _will _open his gate for you. That you will enter into Peace.

I have just one thing to ask of you though...before we go our separate ways for all time... I...don't care if...heaven forgives me, John, or if the saints welcome me with open arms or, more likely, not. It doesn't matter now. It's over now. There are no more miracles. Only one last conviction. I am humbled, I am brought to my knees, well figuratively, if I literally fell to my knees now, I don't think I could get up (emotions...pssh, body betrays me... in the end, I am my own Judas...)

Will _you_ forgive me, John?

If you forgive me...then...it's alright, you see? Heaven can turn a cold shoulder, and hell can board up her doors, not even prisons in the deep give me a place to lay my head, to forever sleep...I will always be in the Dark, and that's alright, because...I will remember the Light. I will remember you. I will be at Peace.

Forgive me...that's the only thing I ask for myself. I know it's a stretch...but..yeah..."

John shook his head,

"What sins?...I don't remember any sins..."he laughed, and he clapped two strong hands on Sherlock's shoulders.

"Ok. I forgive you. Even though there's nothing to forgive...not for me. But..I need you to do something, Sherlock,for me...Please...No more miracles now. No more impossible escapes...No more struggle...It's ok, it is...it's over. Just. Please. For me...Forgive _yourself. _Leave all of this,...this world of judgement and torment and pain and tears...leave it behind. Sorry, but your only prayer will not be answered, because even if St. Peter does open his gates for me, I won't come. Not unless you come with me. Sorry, but no. I'd rather not. I don't belong in the City of the Saints, and when they go marching in...well...my days as a soldier are behind me now. Unless you're there...I don't want to be one of them. I don't want the warmth of heaven, or its light. Because, you are my brother, and you are the one I loved, and you are the one that I would rather stay with, even if they made me the king of their country. No, just , take my hand. Lead me into the dark. Let me be a light to you in dark places...when all other lights have died to you...Let's go...find your Teacher. Maybe if no one else...the captains the kings...gods and men and saints and sinners all... If NOBODY else will show us mercy, just maybe, He will."

Sherlock smiled. And then, he turned.

"I can see a path through all of it...it will be difficult, but...we just might make it to the Wheel. You'll need to walk on your toes, and DO NOT let go of my hand."

"Ok..." John whispered, and clasped tighter.

It was like walking on the water now. Soon, too soon, they were gone, their shaking feet, and Sherlock's all-observant eyes, leading them over waves of electricity to that One Wheel, that meant certain death, or not-so-certain life to them.

There was a music box in the bottom of it too. It pealed out "Nadia's Theme" in a high bell chime, both haunting and soothing , and tormenting, all at once.

In the end they didn't have to choose, heaven or hell. In the end they chose the truth. The truth that love is the most powerful, most important thing, and that there is no Eternity without it...or if there was...then that wasn't their world.

And by the only grace strong enough, I think, even the grace of God, somehow they made it to the Wheel, and Nadia's theme became the anthem of eternity, and John felt a spinning in his head, a dizziness like the wheel about them, this music, this ending, so strange, and so strangely beautiful all at once. Sherlock's brows were twisted in concentration. The high bell chime of hope turned to a low ,damned sound of strings...

There were no more children's songs, no more the music of figure skaters, and the Ice Castles from Nadia's dreams came crashing down, and the world was done. Just a high-pitched sound of strings, like a lady's scream, as Sherlock began to climb to the box, and John climbed up behind him.

He reached out, and held Sherlock steady, by the waist, as he shifted his weight, and reached up, as high as he could reach, and opened the breaker.

He bowed his head, and drew a shaking breath.

"Goodnight...John." he whispered.

"Goodnight...Sherlock." John swallowed, and closed his eyes.

He felt Sherlock's shoulders jerk as he pulled the lever down.

Far away he imagined that he heard Molly Hooper shriek their names in anguish.

Then there was a white light, and a surge, and the wheel came to a horrific stop, and John felt something sting him, something passing though Sherlock's bones, as they were blown backwards, hundreds of yards, rolling through the webs of wires, and down a hill, and landing somewhere on the other shore.

Darkness...


	21. Chapter 21 All Is Well

**Chapter 21: All Is Well~**

In the end, Sherlock had been right. The great electric surge released the Baskervillian psychedelics,(that had been soaked into the weather protection plastic wrap around said wires) by the heat of the surge. A fire broke out, and there was ,for a moment,as they sailed through the air, a heavenly illusion, of legions of white horses speeding to their rescue, angelic warriors astride them.

But by the thunder of hooves, they looked and saw, as the horses' mouths began to froth blood, and they gnashed teeth like razors, and eyes like coals of fire rolled as they came to devour what was left of them. Their bodies turned to super-heated iron,and their veins to copper wires burning with electricity, and their rider's wings began to blaze like a Calvary of Phoenix, and they were plucked away by the wind, and faded like leaves to flame, and they turned to bones clad in iron armor, teeth like brass knives chattering madly, and they slashed at the air with swords of white lighting, and their chins dribbled streams of blood.

But Sherlock and John sailed through Darkness, and to John's eyes, Sherlock had been changed into looking like he did when he wore the Icarus costume, great black wings spread out in a Crucifix pose, sword drawn and trying to shield John from the onslaught. And the image changed again, to Sherlock as he had always been, long dark coat flapping in the wind like a candle flame, standing on the edge of Saint Bart's, with a ring of people gathered on the side walk chanting , "JUMP,JUMP,JUMP,JUMP!"

Sherlock and John's hearts had physically stopped when the electricity hit them full force. Right at this moment, though John didn't know it at the time, they were both clinically dead. For Sherlock this was the second time. He was well aware of it. The hallucinations he saw were far worse, because they were only resurrected memories...that suddenly John was given eyes to see too.

In a flash like many cameras taking accusing pictures of the Hiatus, John understood EVERYTHING. Now, with his own eyes, he saw the entire story, down to the very last blood-soaked detail.

He felt something inside him move. His very soul. His heart had stopped, so it couldn't be it beating. He was out of his body, so no tears could come. But his very soul groaned inside him,...to think what Sherlock had done to save him. How it had all come to nought.

Until...a Man jumped in front of the many, many horses. Until the same Man appeared on the roof, and caught Sherlock in a from-the-back embrace, as he spread his arms to Fall.

The Man struck a whip across the ground, and the horses rolled back like so much sea-foam, and were suddenly gone.

It was eternally dark for a moment, and this Man turned around, auburn hair blown back from his face by an unseen wind.

He was wearing a golden crown,with seven stars around it. John smiled, as suddenly, he knew who He was.

Sherlock came running to Him, and bowed elegantly.

"I am ...very glad that you came to us...and that we didn't have to search all over bloody hell's quarter-mile for you!" Sherlock hissed, his tone always a little more harsh than he probably intended for it to be.

Teacher laughed jovially, and Sherlock stood up straight.

"Now...answer me this...what in BLAZES did you mean when you said I only needed the truth? I have always solved with facts! With information! And yet you INSIST on teaching me with riddles?"

Teacher looked up at John who hung back, still stunned and standing in the shadows. He laughed,and beckoned to him.

"Hello, John. I'm glad Sherlock brought you with him this time. Thank you for loving him, despite the fact that he is impossible."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, "Oh for God's sakes!" he gasped.

"Yes, for my Father's sakes, Sherlock, it is time that you learned a very valuable lesson. One that this whole situation alone could teach you; I know it was painful but it had to be so. Cleverness alone won't save you. Justice alone won't make it right. Even the faith of your kind hearted friend, even your faith in the facts, in what your eyes show you...will fail. There comes a point when your abilities, despite the fact that they are AMAZING, have a limit. There comes a time when you are no longer accountable for your fate. Dear Sherlock...there comes a time when you can't save everyone, and certainly not yourself. There comes a time when Somebody Else has to save you..."

John held his breath, noticing some extreme scars through the Teacher's wrists...He had a million questions he wanted to ask, but now that he was here, he couldn't even open his mouth, if he still had a mouth, being dead as ,for this moment, he was.

"I don't have anyone to save me! I don't have friends! I've just got the one,...and I failed him!" Sherlock hissed, taking handfuls of his hair, suddenly furious.

The Teacher chuckled,"Peace, my impatient friend! You seem to forget, I just saved you. And I have loved you...and consider you my friend. So there. And because I know that the only way to save you, is to save your own John the Beloved, save him I shall. I already have. It won't be the same when the two of you go back..."

"Sorry, go back?...We're...going back?" John asked, able ,at last, to speak.

"Come here, John." the Teacher gasped, suddenly, and reluctantly, John went into his embrace, rather confused. Sherlock stood back, jaw clenched, fingers twitching, not liking to admit that he needed help.

" Yes..you're going back. Because Sherlock is right...as he is most of the time. You deserve to be saved, because your heart is so pure. But not before you see the truth."

Suddenly the Darkness changed to the room in the Mind Palace that Sherlock had gone to the first time he had died. They all turned around, the Teacher folding his arms, and smiling.

There on the sofa, dressed in a military uniform from around 30 years ago, was a man that looked very much like John, save his hair was more yellow than gold ,and he had a rather bushy mustache.

Sherlock smiled...piecing it together,

"Donald..." he gasped.

"Hello, Sherlock. And thank you...for getting justice for me. Seems I can be on my way now..." the actual Colonel said, standing up with a nod to the young detective that had helped ease his soul.

Then he turned to John. Whose jaw had dropped, and he was in tears.

"My God!" Donald gasped, smiling, and laughing, and suddenly in tears himself. "Look at the man you've become!"

"Dad?"

"Come here, Johnny." his father said, and John went to his dad, confused why everyone was hugging him, as the older Watson pulled him fiercely into his arms.

"Do you remember me?" his father asked him.

And suddenly John did.

_Running through the house. A soldier man, with recently short clipped hair, missing the usual bushy mustache that John recognized chasing him around._

_"You're cheating! Hide and seek, not tag!" he heard a 5-year-old version of his own voice squeal._

_"All's fair in love and war, my son!" Donald cried, suddenly popping out of a closet and pulling John down by his little feet, dragging him into the closet and tickling him ,mercilessly._

_"Got you ,kid!" his dad growled playfully..._

_Crossing the street, tiny ice-cream sticky hand tucked into a large calloused one. Trying to march like the big man that was leading him all around London on a visit..._

_For some reason all the memories are going in reverse, he's smaller now, in the bathtub, probably 3 years old. Clothed in bubbles. His dad is sitting next to the tub, laughing at him for flicking bubbles in his face. _

_He's holding a rubber duck that they've stuck down inside of one of Harry's pink doll cars. The other hand is full of shampoo._

_"Oi, listen here ,you little monkey! The point of bath time is to actually wash you-cause you're filthy and you stay that way most of the time! WHO knew such a small child could attract so much dirt!"_

For whatever reason, everyone could see the memories. Sherlock was even smiling, and he didn't do sentiment. The Teacher caught his eye, and then his face froze again, pretending that he wasn't enjoying the memory trip, trying to revert to the robot that everybody who loved him knew he really wasn't.

"Yeah..yeah I think...I do ..." John laughed, swallowing. His dad took his head in both hands, and kissed him on top of it.

"I've missed you, kid!" he gasped, laughing, ruffling John's hair with his fingers. "Well, you're not a kid anymore, you're probably...I'm gonna say...around 34 now?"

"35 next month, 3 years older than Sherlock." John answered smiling, always proud of the fact that ,of the two, he was older. It was a defense against Sherlock's sometimes bossiness.

Donald laughed, "You and Sherlock...Mmm...I'm glad you got a brother ,even though I never lived to give you one. I'm glad that there's someone who can live your life with you, that loves you, like he does...I'm glad the Teacher let you come here, just this once, so I could give you my blessing. Go, my son. Go and really live. Be happy, be well...live with your family. With a "little sister" like Molly, and an "uncle" sort like Major, and a "grandmother" like Mrs. Hudson. Even snobby "older brother" Mycroft. Not my children..not our blood, not Watsons. But your family all the same. The very best family that God could have given you.

Go in the knowledge, my sons.- (he took two strides forward and clapped a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, who looked utterly stunned by this, and sputtered, and blinked ,confused, saying nothing)

...That everything is forgiven now. That St. Peter is at the doors, and that God looks impatiently for your coming home! There will be tea and breakfast when you get there, and everybody will want to hear your adventures! Go now, my children, because now's not the time. Go and know that you are forgiven and loved, and that all is well..."

The Teacher suddenly went and opened a window. Sunlight began to stream in. An ocean wind began to blow. John was suddenly coughing up ashes,and salt water. Could smell his burned skin,and clothes,and hair. Could feel Sherlock laying beside him, coughing, and twisting in the dirt, amazing awareness coming back, rapid deductions flooding his mind.

"SHERLOCK!" John heard Molly scream.

And suddenly, somehow, she WAS there, an old man at her heels, an astonished look on his face. She was there, and had been carrying a sword, but she threw it aside, ran to Sherlock's side, lifted him up like one would a little ,injured kid.

Sherlock's eyes cleared suddenly, blinking at the daylight. Molly had been right. He didn't need her to be clever. Didn't need her to do anything ,really. He just needed her. Her presence was enough help.

"Molly." he whispered, with a smile. Then his brows curled, puzzled. "What are you doing here? With...the troll-sized, unsavory man, that has a hidden stache of Playboy magazine on the island, is left-handed, judging by the way he tied his cave-man makeshift underwear..and is only here because his peers abandoned him for..."

"Shh!" Molly giggled, pressing a hand over his mouth. "Shh, stop, before you say something horrible. You always say something horrible, and it'll spoil everything..." she laughed, drawing his hair back over his brow with her free hand.

The old man came and stood over John, cringing, "This bloke is alive ,but he looks rather dead!" he announced, poking a toe at John's stomach.

Molly closed her eyes tight, "Shut up! You'll spoil it ...also...probably, and...I don't want to listen to your nagging anymore!" she gasped, which made Sherlock chuckle, because Molly was coming out of her shell, empowered by this victory.

She turned to him then, and took her hand off his mouth. He knew he needed to be quiet, so he was.

"You...I saw how you...solved the trap. And then...electricity blew you about a mile through the air... you landed in the sand, and rolled all the way to where we are now...which is..well...I don't know...it's not important..."

"What are you doing here?" Sherlock groaned,awake and suddenly in pain. "And John-where's!" he had a mini panic then, but John reached out,and took his hand.

"I'm here...I'm ok." he gasped, and Molly looked at him,and giggled.

"Oh! I need to phone...I mean walkie, I have a walkie!- but anyway, I'm here because we all came to rescue you,,...and Major's on the beach roughing up the pirates,and smashing them with rather large fake breasts...and Mycroft is at the fort with Solomon,and John's mother, who came clean to the agents, telling them...what you solved..and...The whole story can wait,...oh my God...I'm just so glad...to have you back..."

She hugged Sherlock who laughed and hugged her back, or tried. She gave a soft little hiss of irritation at how Sherlock's clothes prickled with static electricity, and how his hair smelled like fire, and stood on ends, though not as radically as one might expect. And then she hugged John, who laughed and coughed all at once,his hair ruffled like the top of a rooster's head.

"Do I get a free hug?" the dirty Old Ben asked, and Sherlock reached up,and suddenly twisted his leg, making him fall in the dirt. He cried out in pain,being partially electrocuted by Vulcan-charged fingers, and Sherlock very calmly threatened to remove some things from his body if he didn't stop flirting with their "little sister". Molly smiled, not really knowing why Sherlock was calling her that, but not minding at all. Elated to have them back, nervous because John (who was the doctor here) was more so out of his head than anybody, and just kept smiling, and coughing.

"It's ok ...I'm going to call for help. And then I'll be here...I'll stay until they come. It's ok..."

She said that over and over again, trying to make her shaky voice steady, and her uncertainty certain. John laid back,and stared at the sky.

They were alive.

He felt Sherlock's hand shift in his own. Sherlock's hands were more burned, being that he had been the one to touch the lever.

John clutched more tightly at Sherlock,and closed his eyes, and thanked God in heaven for one more miracle, after he'd run out. It wasn't the end after all. They did it, they were alive.

All was well...


	22. Chapter The Last

**Chapter the Last~**

"If you would kindly cease pummeling the Captain with your enormous breasts, Major, and assist my agents in carrying my brothers to the speed boat, I would be most obliged."Mycroft called in a high-pitched voice, so as to be heard over how the Major stood over the pirate captain on the shore, and beat said Turkish pirate captain, with both fake breasts, that he had removed, and wadded up in the pink dress he'd been wearing, revealing that beneath it all he had on a white shirt and jeans, and under these the pink stockings.

John looked up with a half-smile at what Mycroft just said. He was greeted with a smile in return.

"Thank you, Molly..." Mycroft said, drawing close, and looking Sherlock up and down, with a strange look.

Molly smiled, "It was my pleasure, really. I'm just glad they got out, and that when the electric wave blew them back, they didn't land on the wrought iron fence on the other side. The cause of death from that, to be exact...oh! uhmm...maybe I'll tell you another time, now's...not good...is it? "

Mycroft raised a brow, having heard what she said, but not really over-thinking it.

"Couldn't you have made a less dramatic escape, brother mine?"

"Did you have a better idea?"

"I did. But...no matter...Suprisingly, you have managed to pull through yet another absolutely absurd case of near-death experience. When the report of your actual death comes, I shall have them wrap your casket in chains, just to make sure you stay in it for the funeral. Don't want Mum to have a heart attack when you burst out of the box in the middle of the burial ,do you?"

"You talk as if we'll all outlive him!" Anthea cried, noticing the looks on everyone's faces, dismayed looks, except for Sherlock's, he half expected that to be the case himself. His eyes found Solomon, and he smiled ,coldly.

"Some of you...had better hope that you do..." he laughed ,wickedly, as the agents drug Solomon ,whose face was a twisted mask of wrath, away in chains, and stuck him in the very back of the boat, in the compartment intended for luggage.

His wife came more willingly, dragging her chains. She looked apologetically at John, and then turned to Sherlock.

"Thank you."

"For what?" Sherlock laughed, in a haughty tone.

She smiled, and John cringed at the way she looked at him, not wanting to know what sorts of thoughts his utterly immoral mother had about his young friend:

"For condemning me. Because it made me see the truth."

"Oh?"

Lydia Watson turned to John.

"That the man who I married was a gem of a man, a priceless man who didn't deserve to suffer the consequences of my lust, or of his brother's jealousy. And that he gave me my life's greatest grace, a grace that I absolutely do not deserve. My son..."

John swallowed, and his mother bowed her head.

"I can't ask you to forgive me...But ,John, dearest, I am truly sorry."

John reached out, and clasped his mother's hand.

"It's...ok...Mum. It's...all done with now."

"Yes. Maybe I can persuade the Yard to let John visit you and Harriet in prison ,'round Christmas. I will send cranberry sauce."

Dismissively, Sherlock clapped his hands together, and sparks prickled up around his wrists like a Sith Lord.

John turned, and smiled awkwardly at his mother, and then followed him.

Lydia smiled too, because the man her son was an utterly perfect man, in the eyes of pretty much everyone who knew him, and she didn't deserve him. But kind-hearted man that he was, and ultimately the most forgiving of creatures, he decided that he would keep her. And what was more, Sherlock had approved, and dark creature that he was, he was not so readily forgiving.

Yes, in the end all was well that had ended well. She didn't know what would become of her now. Sherlock had dramatically threatened to "hang"Harriet, but Mycroft was talking more along the lines of spending the rest of their lives, along with the Mother, (who was being led away in chains, with an ice pack on her lip ,that Sherlock had busted with the "skeleton ball") in prison. For murder though, Solomon would be joining Donald in eternity very soon...

Molly awkwardly drew close to Mycroft, watching from a distance, as the Major came and scooped up, first John, under one arm, and Sherlock under the other, and carried them like a little girl would her dolls, dragging the fake breasts behind him, wrapped by the dress around his heel, and very carefully propped them up in the boat. He then proceeded to make Sherlock sit very still, whilst he re-charged Molly's taser with his hair.

"Don't tell her ,but I believe the thing is defective. Mycroft bloody well doesn't trust her as far as he could throw her...oh well that's not saying a whole lot since one could toss her like a baseball she is so small, which is the whole point...but despite her smallishness...and insecurity...she is rather..."

On it went, John rolling with laughter beside Sherlock, until Anthea started charging her ever-present mobile by holding the plug to its charger over his head.

The other agents occupied themselves with arresting and interrogating Old Ben, who was forced to surrender the fabled charts, to the island( that Solomon had lied and said were in John's possession, the reason ultimately for his and Sherlock's capture) that the pirates( who were being arrested and chained up on their own boat) had wanted,along with 40 million dollars worth of gold he had stowed away in another of the islands little caves, along with his store of porn that Sherlock had deduced he must have, and only God knows how.

Molly cleared her throat.

"Well...that was exciting."

"Indeed,it was." Mycroft replied.

"And terrifying...Mycroft...really...why is it so ...well...difficult to keep Sherlock safe?"

Mycroft sighed, and laid a hand on Molly's shoulder.

"Some people are safer the closer they are to danger...My brother is one of such people. And after all the things that I have seen him overcome...I truly believe he is utterly indestructible, and will die ,a very old man, in his bed. With John Watson , a very old man in his bed just down the halls of Baker Street, dying the very same night, because they are both of them inseparable."

And with that Mycroft smiled, a calm ,mischievous smile.

"And I will be here always, to look over them and to meddle...and to bail them out of trouble whenever the ship drifts too far down stream, until the lot of us are dead, and tucked into the clay, safe beneath our stones. It's quite alright ,Molly, dear. Life is an adventure. You aren't guaranteed safety, but you are guaranteed salvation...if you ask for it."

And with that, there was Peace. Molly smiled, as the ocean breathed a sigh of relief, that all was well.

**~The End~**

**Author's Note:**

**This story was an unofficial tribute to the brilliant Mr. Robin Williams. The flashback scene in Chapter 2 was a parody of a scene from "Dead Poet's Society". The references to genies throughout the text was a reference to his voice role in Disney's "Aladdin". The quote "What becomes of the soul of a machine?" that I changed slightly and that the Mother uses in Chapter 14, as well as the references to the "green goo" were both references to his role in "Flubber". Major Sholto's cross-dressing routine was a reference to William's role in "Mrs. Doubtfire". The music-box Carnival, that was full of many skeleton men was a reference to the pre-Apocalypse carnival/"Music Box Scene" and some of the "Stahlchild" villain characters from the Nintendo company's "Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask", and the dynamic between Solomon and Donald Watson was a parody of the agonized relationship of "The Composer Brothers" in the same "Zelda" title. The Legend of Zelda being one of his favorite stories, and Princess Zelda herself being the name sake for his daughter, Ms. Zelda Williams.**

**In memory of a brilliant story-teller, who made us laugh, and smile, and sometimes even brought us to tears, but above all made his stories LIVE, after himself. Rest in Peace.**


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